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Germany said on Wednesday that Alexei Navalny had “no doubt” been poisoned by the neurotoxin novitjok. A special laboratory of the German army is behind the toxicological analyzes.
Erik Lindeman of the Poisons Information Center says only Russia has tried access to the novitiate. You think it’s almost like leaving a business card.
– If you want to kill a person, it is incredibly much easier to hit their head with a frying pan. Now they have chosen a method in which it is quite uncertain if they die, while sending a disguised acknowledgment that it is a state-led action, he says.
Only know five people who have been poisoned by novitjok before. In addition to Navalny, it is the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Julia in Salisbury in the United Kingdom in 2018. Also, a man and a woman who later came into contact with the perfume bottle with the poison placed in front of Sergei Skripal they were poisoned. The man survived but his wife died, claims The Independent.
Therefore, it is very unusual to be poisoned by novitjok.
– Novitjok is not as unique as polonium, which can only be obtained in special nuclear reactors, but it is on the border and those who have probably should know, he says and refers to the radioactive substance as the former Russian agent. Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned and died in London in 2006.
Novitjok is covered by an international agreement on chemical weapons and is strictly regulated. The building blocks are also strictly regulated. To make the poison safely, you must have an extremely advanced laboratory, says Erik Lindeman.
– It is incredibly toxic, it is enough to get less than one drop on the skin to die.
Despite being so toxic, four out of five who have come in contact with the poison have survived. Erik Lindeman speculates that it may have been difficult to carry out the poisonings in practice, and in Navalny’s case, the purpose may not have been to kill the opposition politician.
Novitjok is a so-called cholinesterase inhibitor and inhibits an enzyme that breaks down the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. The autonomic nervous system becomes overactive and begins to drool, snore, sweat, vomit, feel bad, and have diarrhea. Tears flow, the pupils constrict, and the lungs emit foamy secretions.
The nerve agent belongs to the same family that was used in the murder of Kim Jong-un’s half-brother, Kim Jong-nam, at Kuala Lumpur airport in 2017 and in the saringa attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995.
– Our experience with this topic is almost non-existent, but it seems that it can cause incurable damage. It’s concerning for Navalny, says Erik Lindeman.
The Poisons Information Center is a Swedish state national advisory service under the Agency for Medical Products.
Read more:
Germany: Navalny was poisoned by Novitjok
Anna-Lena Laurén: Novitjok points directly to the Russian security service
