Russia denies allegations that nerve agent was stored in military lab
(Baonghean.vn) - On April 6, Interfax news agency quoted Mr. Mikhail Babich, the Kremlin representative in the Volga federal region, as saying that Moscow denied British media reports that the nerve agent used in the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal was invented in a laboratory in a Russian town.
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| Investigators of the poisoning case. Photo: AP |
A day earlier, The Times newspaper quoted British security sources as saying they believed the chemical called Novichok was produced at the Shikhany facility in the Saratov region of central Russia.
“This laboratory was never part of our work,” said Mr. Babich, who served as chairman of Russia’s state committee for chemical disarmament. “All chemical weapons storage facilities are public. Shikhany is not one of them.” The official acknowledged that there was another “facility” in the Saratov region, but not in Shikhany.
According to The Times, this facility is similar to the chemical research center at Porton Down in England, which is noted for its “dark” past and for conducting human experiments for war purposes.
The closed town of Shikhany is the site of a branch of the National Scientific Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology (GNIIOKhT).
The Soviet Union established a network of closed towns to store military equipment and secret research facilities, access to which was strictly restricted.
Some scientists, including Vil Mirzayanov, who first discovered the existence of Novichok, said that this nerve agent was invented by scientist Pyotr Kirpichev in Shikhany.
Last month, Russian scientist Leonid Rink told state media that he had worked at the national laboratory in Shikhany for the past 27 years, where the development of Novichok was the basis for his professorial thesis.
On the website of GNIIOKhT, it is stated that the institute's branch in Shikhany is currently carrying out work related to “ensuring the security” of Russia and the destruction of chemical weapons.
Last September, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Moscow had destroyed the country's last chemical weapons./.
