Creator of Novitjok: Kremlin tried to assassinate Navalny

– If it were Novitjok, it is unlikely that Navalny would have survived. At least if he got it through tea, Vladimir Uglev tells DN by phone.

Uglev is the chemist behind the neurotoxin Novitjok, a collective name for a group of neurotoxins that were secretly developed in a Soviet laboratory in the 1970s. When Sergej and Julia Skripal were poisoned by Novitjok in the UK in 2018, Uglev said in an interview with DN that most likely it was the Russian security service that was behind.

Also in the case of Navalny, he believes that the Russian security service is guilty. However, he doubts that the poison belongs to the Novitjok group.

– Skripals was poisoned through the skin, apparently Navalny from his tea. If you swallow the poison by swallowing it, the symptoms are much faster. Navalny hadn’t made it to the flight of stairs and had barely survived, says Uglev.

What navalny survived, you can mainly thank the pilot, according to Uglev. If the pilot had not landed the plane between Tomsk and Omsk, but had flown to Moscow, Navlany would not have survived. It has also been shown that doctors in Omsk, who refused to admit that Navalny was poisoned, gave him the antidote atropine at the same time, the same antidote that doctors in Germany have treated him with.

According to the independent Dojd, his wife Julia Navalnaja unofficially thanked the Omsk doctors for their work. Navalny would not have survived without her care.

At the same time, they did not want to give him permission to fly to Germany, apparently exposed to strong external pressure. Uglev takes it for granted that the Kremlin is behind the attack on Navalny.

– Who killed Boris Nemtsov? Who killed the rest of the opposition? The state has been doing this since 1917, he says.

Will Mirzajanov too A former Soviet chemist, he tells Dozhd that he doesn’t think the poison was Novitjok either.

– These types of toxins remain in the body for a long time. All of this can be found out through a blood test. I don’t understand why doctors are so helpless, says Mirzajanov in an interview with Dozhd.

Mirzajanov, now living in the United States, played a leading role when the Soviet Union’s secret chemical weapons were disarmed in the 1990s. He was charged with high treason and went into exile in the United States in 1995.

Germans the doctors they have been very secretive about their findings so far, but say the venom appears to be some kind of cholinesterase inhibitor. They have reportedly contacted Bulgarian doctors to find out more about the poisoning of Bulgarian businessman Emilian Gebrev in 2015. Gebrev is an arms dealer and has sold weapons to Ukraine, with which Russia is in practice fighting in the eastern Ukraine. Doctors believe Navalny may have been poisoned with the same type of neurotoxin-pesticide mix as Gebrev.

At this point, it seems clear that Navalny’s chances of survival are good. The question is in what state.

– It all depends on whether the poison has damaged the brain. In that case, the consequences can be serious. But he can also cope, in the same way as Pyotr Verzilov, Vladimir Uglev tells DN.

Verzilov, medlem i Pussy Riot, He was poisoned after he rushed onto a field dressed as a policeman during the 2018 World Cup final. A few months later, he was taken to Moscow hospital in critical condition. Doctors claimed that he had overdosed on asthma and sleep medication, something that relatives did not believe. A few days later he was transferred to the Charité hospital in Berlin, where he made a full recovery. It is the same hospital where Navalny is now hospitalized.

According to Uglev, the antidote atropine, which doctors have used to cure Navalny, is another indication that he has not been poisoned with Novitjok.

– Atropine is not used against Novitjok. On the contrary, it had aggravated the patient’s condition.