Was Navalny Poisoned? Novichok's Creator Casts Doubt On The Current Storyline

Alexei Navalny's family has no doubt he was killed by the Russian state — and little doubt that the cause of death was the poison Novichok.

The Russian opposition leader's mother has been fighting to recover Navalny's body since his death in an Arctic penal colony on Feb. 16. A spokesman for Navalny stated that Russian officials told his mother and his lawyers that they are holding the body for a “chemical examination” to determine the cause of death.

After being told she won't have access to his body for another 14 days, Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, posted a video in which she blames Russian President Vladimir Putin for her husband’s death. The delay, she believes, has been imposed to allow traces of the lethal Novichok nerve agent — already placed in her husband’s underwear in an attempt on his life in August 2020 — to dissipate.

Yet the former Soviet chemist Vil Mirzayanov, one of Novichok’s creators, casts doubt on whether Navalny was poisoned with the nerve agent a second time. “If this version of poisoning is true,” he says in an exclusive interview with Agenstvo, “it is unlikely that he will ever be returned to his mother.”'

Soviet-era weapons

The Russian government has historically poisoned those deemed to be political threats, with many methods tested both during and after the Cold War: coffee laced with thallium, a pointed umbrella tipped with ricin, disfiguring dioxin in a serving of rice, tea with a side of radioactive polonium.

According to a statement from the Federal Penitentiary Service of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District, Navalny felt ill following a walk and then lost consciousness almost immediately. At the penal colony, Navalny’s mother and lawyers were told he had died of “sudden death syndrome.”

Due to the potential longevity of Novichok traces, Mirzayanov is skeptical that Navalny was poisoned this way.

Mirzayanov, who has lived in the U.S. since the mid 1990s, says that high concentrations of Novichok can cause instant cardiac arrest. However, due to the potential longevity of Novichok traces, he is skeptical that Navalny was poisoned this way.

Novichok is a general term applied to a group of military-grade nerve agents developed in a Soviet chemical weapons program. Some Russian scientists say they are some of the deadliest ever made. The intent, as with other Russian-produced poisons, is for the victim to seemingly die of natural — or at least inconclusive — causes. The nerve agents may be in solid or liquid form (with the potential to evaporate to gas), though it is believed that Novichok is most often distributed as powder.

The Skripal case

Novichok’s first international moment came in 2018, when Sergei Skripal, a former Russian intelligence officer who defected to the UK, and his daughter, Yulia Skripal, were targeted. Though both were found in time to save their lives, two other British citizens — Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess, who picked up a discarded perfume bottle containing the nerve agent three months after the Skripal incident — were caught in the crossfire. Although Rowley survived, Sturgess had sprayed what she believed to be perfume on her wrist and later died.

In the Agenstvo interview, Mirzayanov first says that very small concentrations of the nerve agent are detectable in a body at least a month after poisoning. Following further questioning, Mirzayanov clarifies his belief that Novichok has a much longer shelf life than two weeks.

Mirzayanov does not believe Moscow could manipulate Navalny’s body to eradicate evidence of Novichok.

“I proceed from the experience of the treatment of the Skripals by the English. After an antidote saved their lives, the concentration of Novichok in no way waned. It was necessary to perform surgery and almost mechanically destroy Novichok from the liver and other organs. Surprise. Apparently, the Novichok molecules that come into contact with organs acquire a protective casing and impede further degasification [the removal of dissolved gases from liquids]. From this I have concluded that Novichok can remain indefinitely at some level of concentration. For how long, we cannot yet know. Possibly the British know.”

Mirzayanov, who has taught at Rutgers University in New Jersey, does not believe that the Russian government could somehow manipulate Navalny’s body to eradicate evidence of Novichok poisoning. “The products of [Novichok] decay will remain permanently, as they will no longer be released naturally from urine and feces.”

Mirzayanov also cautions that, if poisoned with Novichok, Navalny’s body could continue to be a risk to those who come into contact with it if unprotected.