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Vil Mirzajanov is the Soviet chemist who revealed to the West that the neurotoxin novitjok exists. For 27 years, from 1965 to 1992, he worked at the State Scientific Research Institute of the Soviet Research Institute for Organic Chemistry and Technology (GOSNIIOCHT) in Moscow. The work of the institute was secret. One of his great scientific achievements was the creation of the neurotoxin novitjok.
Unlike Vladimir Uglev, whom DN has previously interviewed, Mirzajanov was not personally responsible for the scientific work with novitjok. His role was to lead counterespionage against foreign intelligence services. He had access to secret material and was well acquainted with working with the nerve agent.
– I also worked as a chemist and analyst. My applicants developed methods and we did field experiments in Shichany, says Vil Mirzajanov in an interview with DN from his current home in Princeton.
Shichany was the secret laboratory of the institute for chemical weapons on the outskirts of Saratov, in southwestern Russia.
Police and security personnel in front of the Berlin Charité hospital where Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny was taken in after being poisoned.
Photograph: Bernd von Jutrczenka / TT
In 1992, Mirzajanov published an article in Moskovskie novosti where he accused the Russian government of violating the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, as it continued to produce poisons that belonged to the category of prohibited chemical weapons. Mirzajanov was brought to justice for revealing a state secret. He was acquitted for lack of evidence and immigrated to the United States in 1995. Today he lives in Princeton, New Jersey. In 2008, he was the first to reveal the novitiate formula in the book “State Secrets: A Chronicle of the Russian Chemical Weapons Program.”
Mirzajanov is frequently interviewed in the Russian independent media about the poisoning of Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny. According to him, there is not the slightest doubt as to who is to blame for Navalny’s poisoning.
– Who makes this poison? There is no doubt about it. Russia has a monopoly. When it comes to toxins that fall outside of standard production, the work effort is so great that you really have to consider that you need the poison to invest those resources. Why would the Czech Republic or Germany need it? Doing novitjok is not done in a few months, it requires years of scientific work.
When Sergei and Julia Skripal were poisoned At Salisbury 2018, the British police tracked down the culprits: agents from the GRU, the intelligence service of the Russian army. The Russian security service FSB poisoned Alexander Litvinenko with polonium in 2006. Mirzijanov believes that one of these organizations is also behind the attack on Navalny.
Two people in protective clothing clean up novitjok at Salisbury 2018, where the nerve agent was used against Sergej and Julia Skripal.
Photo: Matt Dunham / AP
– I was surprised when the news reached me that it was a novitiate. I did not think they would be repeated. But that in itself is not so strange. The criminals return to the crime scene. With Skripals you failed, the second time you think that now we have learned.
That the Russian security service uses a poison that they themselves point out so clearly seems strange. But Mirzajanov says the security service is reasoning in its own way.
– It takes such a small amount of poison and it is easy to use. Novitjok is not particularly easy to track either, it is not a standard product. After Skripals, of course, they knew that poison could be traced, but since the amount needed is so small, it was probably thought that Navalny would not need to stay in Russia for long for the poison to disappear from the body. They made a mistake there. Of course, experiments have been done on rabbits on how quickly the poison disappears, but humans are something else.
Alexei Navalny.
Photo: Mladen Antonov / AFP
Novitjok is not an individual poison without a collective name for a group of neurotoxins. Will Mirzajanov believes that Navalny’s case was A242 in powder form, which was dissolved in liquid. This was also stated by Vladimir Uglev in an interview with the Russian newspaper The Insider.
– I guess they tried a different form of novitjok than the one used in Skripals, because they thought it would be more difficult to track.
Skripals were poisoned through the skin, probably after the door handle was doused with the poison.
According to Mirzajanov, Russia has a legal number of novitiates large enough to be sufficient for security operations.
– Russia has the right to produce up to 100 grams of poison per year for scientific purposes. Ten milligrams is enough to kill a human being.
Contrary to a german source In Die Zeit, Mirzajanov says that the goal was not necessarily to kill Navalny.
– I think above all they wanted to turn him into a disabled person for life. Otherwise, it would have been easy to administer a dose sufficient to kill a human. Scientists carefully study these things through animal experiments.
Mirzijanov says he is a “cautious optimist” about Navalny’s chances of regaining health.
– Medical science has progressed. Since Sergei and Julia Skripal were poisoned in Britain, new knowledge has been gained. But it is difficult to say if Navalny will be completely healthy. Researchers who were mistakenly poisoned during the Soviet era did not return to work and were never told how they had done. It was a secret. All I know is that they were disabled.
Read more:
Michael Winiarski: Fears grow that Navalny will point to the culprits
Russian police want to question Navalny
