AP Explains: Novichok that sickened Navalny a Cold War relic

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AP Explains: Novichok that sickened Navalny a Cold War relic

2020-09-03 23:22 Last Updated At：23:30

Novichok, a deadly nerve agent that has left Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny in a coma and nearly killed a former Russian spy and his daughter in 2018, was the product of a highly secretive Soviet chemical weapons program. Here is a look at the program and the agent.

HOW LETHAL IS NOVICHOK?

Novichok, the nerve agent used in the attack that nearly killed former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in the English city of Salisbury on March 4, 2018, has been described as much deadlier than any U.S. equivalents.

Just a few milligrams of the odorless liquid — the weight of a snowflake — are enough to kill a person within minutes. The agent could be diluted to the desired concentration and added to food or drink, or applied to surfaces or clothes.

Scientists say the nerve agent could remain deadly for a long time — even if a few tiny drops are left in a syringe or impregnated into wood or fabric.

In the Salisbury attack, it was sprayed on the front door of Skripal's house after being smuggled into Britain in a counterfeit Nina Ricci perfume bottle. The Skripals spent weeks in critical condition before recovering, and a local woman died after being exposed to the bottle, which was found by her boyfriend.

WHAT DO THE RUSSIANS SAY ABOUT NOVICHEK POISONINGS?

Russia fiercely denied British accusations over the Skripals’ poisoning, accusing London and other Western nations of using the incident to fan an anti-Russian campaign. It has followed the same path of denial in this summer’s Navalny poisoning.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday called Navalny’s poisoning an attempted murder that aimed to silence one of Putin’s fiercest critics and called for a full investigation, saying “there are very serious questions now that only the Russian government can answer, and must answer."

Russia, however, has demanded that Germany share its data backing up its conclusion that Navalny was poisoned and has called for a joint investigation effort.

President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, insisted Thursday that “there is no reason to accuse the Russian state” over the poisoning. He said Moscow expects Berlin to provide information that would help a Russian probe into the cause of Navalny’s illness, and that Russia doctors in Siberia, where Navalny was taken after he fell ill on Aug. 20, found no evidence of poisoning.

Sergei Naryshkin, the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, even claimed it can’t be excluded that Navalny’s poisoning was a provocation of Western intelligence agencies.

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WHEN WAS NOVICHOK DESIGNED?

The Soviet program to design a new generation of chemical weapons began in the 1970s to counter the latest U.S. chemical weapons.

Soviet leaders wanted the equivalent of U.S. binary weapons — agents made up of relatively harmless components that turn deadly when mixed, making them easier to operate than regular chemical weapons. While Novichok class poisons were highly lethal, the program was only partly successful, as some of the components were as toxic as the military-grade nerve agents.

The Soviet leadership eventually lost interest in chemical weapons. Novichok-class agents only were manufactured in lab quantities. Vladimir Uglev, a top scientist in the program, has estimated about 100 kilograms (220 pounds) were made.

IS IT POSSIBLE TO TRACE NOVICHOK’S SOURCE?

Russian experts who have worked on the Novichok class of agents have warned it may never be possible to determine the nerve agent’s origin.

To determine what specific lab produced a given sample of Novichok, it’s necessary to find an identical specimen from the same batch — an impossible task.

Facing accusations for the Skripals’s poisoning, Russia has charged that the U.S., Britain and other Western countries had acquired the expertise to make the nerve agent and that the Novichok used in that attack could have come from them.

COULD IT FALL INTO THE WRONG HANDS?

The main Soviet research center that designed the Novichok-class agents was in Shikhany, a town in southwestern Russia. It was one of the “closed cities” isolated by the KGB. The sprawling facility also housed chemical depots and a military firing range, where nerve agents were tested throughout the Cold War.

Some Novichok-related research also was conducted at a main Moscow research center, which shared samples with other labs across the Soviet Union.

Despite the U.S. oversight to dismantle Russia’s chemical arsenals after the Soviet collapse, scientists involved in the program said they couldn’t exclude that some lab workers might have been tempted to sell toxic substances amid the economic and political turmoil in the 1990s.

MURKY STATUS

Moscow said in 2017 it completed the destruction of 40,000 metric tons of chemical weapons left over from the Soviet era, an effort that spanned two decades under close international oversight.

The Novichok-class agents weren’t originally mentioned in the Chemical Weapons Convention, an international document that outlawed chemical weapons.

Last year, however, they were added to the list of chemicals that require special verification measures under the treaty’s provisions. The move came after the 2018 Salisbury attack and marked the first time the list had been updated.

Rubio, Hegseth brief congressional leaders as questions mount over next steps in Venezuela

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other top officials briefed leaders in Congress late Monday on the striking military operation in Venezuela amid mounting concerns that President Donald Trump is embarking on a new era of U.S. expansionism without consultation of lawmakers or a clear vision for running the South American country.

Republican leaders entered the closed-door session at the Capitol largely supportive of Trump's decision to forcibly remove Venezuela's president Nicolás Maduro from power, but many Democrats emerged with more questions as Trump maintains a fleet of naval vessels off the Venezuelan coast and urges U.S. companies to reinvest in the country's underperforming oil industry.

A war powers resolution that would prohibit U.S. military action in Venezuela without approval from Congress is heading for a vote this week in the Senate.

“We don't expect troops on the ground,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said afterward.

He said Venezuela's new leadership cannot be allowed to engage in narcoterrorism or the trafficking of drugs into the U.S., which sparked Trump's initial campaign of deadly boat strikes that have killed more than 115 people.

“This is not a regime change. This is demand for a change in behavior,” Johnson said. "We don't expect direct involvement in any other way beyond just coercing the new, the interim government, to get that going.”

Johnson added, "We have a way of persuasion — because their oil exports as you know have been seized, and I think that will bring the country to a new governance in very short order,” he said.

But Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, emerged saying, “There are still many more questions that need to be answered.”

“What is the cost? How much is this going to cost the United States of America?” Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said afterward.

The briefing, which stretched for two hours, came days after the surprise military action that few, if any, of the congressional leaders, knew about until after it was underway — a remarkable delay in informing Congress, which has ultimate say over matters of war.

Administration officials fielded a range of questions — from further involvement of U.S. troops on the ground to the role of the Venezuelan opposition leadership that appeared to have been sidelined by the Trump administration as the country’s vice president, Maduro ally Delcy Rodriguez, swiftly became the country’s interim president.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Air Force Gen. Dan Caine and Attorney General Pam Bondi, who brought drug trafficking charges against Maduro, all joined the classified session. It was intended for the so-called “gang of eight” leaders, which includes Intelligence committee leadership as well as the chairmen and ranking lawmakers on the national security committees.

Asked afterward if he had any more clarity about who is actually running Venezuela, Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said, “I wish I could tell you yes, but I can’t.”

Leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee — Republican chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and ranking Democrat Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois — said they should have been included in the classified briefing, arguing they have oversight of the Justice Department under Bondi.

Earlier in the day, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer warned that Trump’s action in Venezuela is only the beginning of a dangerous approach to foreign policy as the president publicly signals his interests in Colombia, Cuba and Greenland.

“The American people did not sign up for another round of endless wars,” Schumer said.

Afterward, Schumer said the briefing, “while extensive and long, posed far more questions than it answered.”

Republicans hold mixed views reflective of the deepening schism within Trump's “Make America Great Again” movement as the president, who vowed to put America first, ventures toward overseas entanglements many lawmakers in both parties want to avoid — particularly after the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Next steps in the country, and calls for elections in Venezuela, are uncertain.

The Trump administration had been in talks with Rodríguez, who took the place of her ally Maduro and offered “to collaborate” with the Trump administration. Meanwhile, Trump has been dismissive of Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who last month won the Nobel Peace Prize for her struggle to achieve a democratic transition in her nation. Trump has said Machado lacks the “support” or “respect” to run the country.

But Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., a staunch Trump ally, said he plans to speak soon with Machado, and called her “very popular if you look at what happened in the last election.”

“She eventually, I think, will be the president of Venezuela," Scott said. "You know, this is going to be a process to get to a democracy. It’s not easy. There’s a lot of bad people still there, so it’s going to take time. They are going to have an election and I think she will get elected.”

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who has been a leading critic of the Trump campaign of boat strikes against suspected drug smugglers, said there are probably a dozen leaders around the world who the U.S. could say are in violation of an international law or human rights law.

“And we have never gone in and plucked them out the country. So it sets a very bad precedent for doing this and it’s unconstitutional,” Paul told reporters. “There’s no way you can say bombing a capital and removing the president of a foreign country is not an initiation of war.”

Associated Press writer Kevin Freking contributed to this story.