The nerve agent novichok was developed and produced in Shikhany, home of a military research establishment in central Russia, according to a chemical weapons expert. Hamish de Bretton-Gordon said the information was contained in a report submitted several years ago by Russia to the international body that monitors chemical weapons, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).



The UK government has asked the OPCW to investigate the use of novichok in the attempted murder of the Russian former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury. Theresa May said in a Commons statement on Wednesday: “We are working with the police to enable the OPCW to independently verify our analysis.”

The OPCW is expected to arrive in the UK shortly. The onus would then be on the organisation to visit Russia to see if there are stockpiles of novichok and, if found, to oversee their destruction. If Russia insists it has no such stockpiles, it could lead to an international standoff and diplomatic wrangling at the United Nations.

Quick Guide What is novichok? Show Novichok refers to a group of nerve agents developed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 80s to elude international restrictions on chemical weapons. Like other nerve agents, they are organophosphate compounds, but the chemicals used to make them, and their final structures, are considered classified in the UK, the US and other countries. The most potent of the novichok substances are considered to be more lethal than VX, the most deadly of the familiar nerve agents, which include sarin, tabun and soman. Novichok agents work in a similar way, by massively over-stimulating muscles and glands. Treatment for novichok exposure would be the same as for other nerve agents, namely with atropine, diazepam and potentially drugs called oximes. The chemical structures of novichok agents were made public in 2008 by Vil Mirzayanov, a former Russian scientist living in the US, but the structures have never been publicly confirmed. It is thought they can be made in different forms, including as a dust aerosol. The novichoks are known as binary agents because they only become lethal after mixing two otherwise harmless components. According to Mirzayanov, they are 10 to 100 times more toxic than conventional nerve agents. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images Europe

Bretton-Gordon said: “The OPCW must get to Salisbury as soon as possible for an independent investigation and then go to Russia to visit the site. If they [Russia] have nothing to hide, why would they veto it? It would be an admission of guilt. I think Putin has made his first big mistake in a long time.”

Shikhany is the Russian equivalent of the UK’s Porton Down, home to various military research facilities that specialise in radiation, chemical and other weaponry.



Bretton-Gordon, a former commander of the now disbanded UK Chemical, Biological, Radiation and Nuclear regiment and its Nato equivalent, said Shikhany was the sole location for development and production of novichok, dismissing suggestions that the chemical could be found in other places in the former Soviet Union such as Ukraine and Uzbekistan. “They have no more anywhere else,” he said.

Bretton-Gordon’s assertion about Shikhany is supported by Vil Mirzayanov, a Russian former chemist who worked on the novichok programme before defecting to the US. In his book State Secrets: An Insider’s Chronicle of the Russian Chemical Weapons Programme, he said novichok was developed between 1971 and 1973 by Petr Kirpichev, a senior scientist at Skikhany.



According to Mirzayanov, there were several laboratories where nerve agents, and cytotoxins such as ricin, were made.



The 192-member OPCW was set up to police a convention banning chemical weapons. Both the UK and Russia are signatories to the convention. If Russia was to block an investigation, theoretically the OPCW could take the issue to the UN security council, where Russia has a veto. It also has the option of taking it to the UN general assembly, where there is no such veto.

The issue could go all the way to the international court of justice for resolution. But the OPCW has a reputation for being slow, overly bureaucratic and risk-averse, reluctant to become engaged in political confrontations.

Asked whether the OPCW had agreed to the UK’s request to investigate, the OPCW replied in an email: “OPCW Public Affairs has no information about this at the moment.”

Nato expressed deep concern at what it said was the first offensive use of nerve agent on a Nato member’s territory since its foundation after the second world war. It called on Russia “to address the UK’s questions, including providing full and complete disclosure of the novichok programme to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons”.



• This article was amended on 23 March 2018 because ricin is not a nerve agent as an earlier version said.