A Russian scientist told state media Tuesday he worked on an official programme to produce the nerve agent Britain says was used on ex-spy Sergei Skripal, contradicting Moscow's claims it never developed Novichok. Leonid Rink told RIA Novosti state news agency he worked on a state-backed programme up to the early 1990s, adding that the former double agent and his daughter would be dead had Moscow been involved in his poisoning.
"They are still alive. That means that either it was not the Novichok system at all, or it was badly concocted, carelessly applied," he said. "Or straight after the application, the English used an antidote, in which case they would have to have known exactly what the poison was," he said. Rink said he worked at a state laboratory in the closed town of Shikhany for 27 years, where the development of Novichok formed the basis of his doctoral dissertation.
"A large group of specialists in Shikhany and Moscow worked on 'Novichok'," he said. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov last week said Moscow never had any programmes to develop the chemical weapon.
"I want to state with all possible certainty that the Soviet Union or Russia had no programmes to develop a toxic agent called Novichok," he said. The foreign ministry told AFP on Tuesday this remained its position. Vil Mirzayanov, a Russian chemist who moved to the US in the 1990s and first revealed the existence of Novichok nerve agents, told AFP he knew Rink through their work on the chemical weapons programme. "Several hundred people" worked on the programme, he said. But unlike Rink, Mirzayanov has maintained the Russians carried out the attack.
Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova earlier said Britain had chosen the name "Novichok" because it sounded Russian and would implicate Moscow in the attempted killing. The name "immediately creates associations with Russia, something Russian, so as to immediately focus attention on our country," Zakharova said. She added that Britain, Slovakia, the Czech Republic or Sweden could have been the source of the nerve agent. The countries have denied the claims and on Monday Sweden said it had summoned Russia's ambassador for talks over the allegations.