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MOSCOW: A scientist involved in the secret Soviet program to create the nerve agent Novichok apologized to Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, who is recovering from poisoning in Berlin.
Vil Mirzayanov, a chemist who was the first to reveal Novichok’s development, in an interview with Russia’s TV Rain on Saturday night said he wanted to apologize to Navalny after Germany said it found “unequivocal evidence” that he was poisoned. with Novichok.
The opposition politician on Saturday described his severe symptoms after falling ill on a plane on August 20, including the inability to form words, and said he still had trouble pouring a glass of water or using a phone.
“I offer my deepest apologies to Navalny for the fact that I participated in this criminal business, developing this substance with which he was poisoned,” said Mirzayanov, who now lives in the United States and wrote the first articles on the development of Novichok to early 1990s.
His apology comes when another scientist who worked on the show has denied that Navalny could have been poisoned by Novichok.
So far, three scientists, now in their 70s, have made public statements after working on the top-secret Soviet project.
Mirzayanov predicted that Navalny would eventually recover.
“Navalny will just have to be patient, but in the end, he should be healthy,” Mirzayanov said, predicting that recovery would take “almost a year.”
He suggested that Navalny most likely ingested the poison by mouth, as it appears not to have contaminated others.
This contradicts a suggestion by another scientist who worked on Novichok, Vladimir Uglev, who told research site Proyekt that Navalny’s survival suggested that he only had skin contact.
Navalny’s aides collected discarded items from his hotel room in the Siberian city of Tomsk and sent them to German experts who found Novichok in a bottle of water.
Russian scientist Leonid Rink, who according to state media worked on the program to develop Novichok, scoffed at Mirzayanov’s comments on Sunday.
Speaking to the RIA Novosti news agency, Rink said Mirzayanov, while working at the same research center, was a “common” chemist who was not directly involved in the creation of Novichok.
“It has nothing to do with the creation of Novichok,” Rink insisted, adding that Mirzayanov could not know its “biological effects.”
Rink argued that if Novichok had been used in Navalny, the leader of the opposition would have died.
“He wouldn’t have survived if he was Novichok,” he said.
