A legacy of ‘secrecy and deception’: Why Russia clings to an outlawed chemical arsenal

On July 12, 2018, British scientists gathered at a restricted military base for a first look at the weapon used in a bizarre murder attempt a few weeks before. The device was a perfume bottle, tossed away by the assailants as they fled the country, and containing less than a tablespoon of a liquid so deadly that it could only be handled with heavy rubber gloves and hazmat gear.

Investigators already suspected that the weapon was of Russian origin — the intended victim was a Russian ex-spy living in England, and the attackers were identified as military intelligence operatives from Moscow. The surprise, as the examination unfolded, was the sheer potency of the oily fluid inside the vial. It was enough poison, the scientists calculated, to wipe out a small town: the equivalent of thousands of lethal doses.

This was Novichok, a powerful nerve agent invented by Russia. Just a year earlier, in 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin had declared to the world that his country no longer possessed such chemical weapons. U.S. and British intelligence officials believed at the time that Putin was lying, and here, in a laboratory in southern England, was tangible proof. Russia had secretly preserved at least some of its arsenal of poisons, and it clearly was willing to use them — including on foreign soil.

Four years later, insights from the probe into the attempted assassination of defector Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England, are helping to fuel worries that Russian chemical weapons could soon turn up in yet another country, with far graver consequences. The Biden administration has repeatedly warned that Russia, frustrated with the faltering progress of its 3-week-old invasion of Ukraine, may be preparing to use chemical weapons against Ukrainian troops, political leaders or even ordinary civilians in an effort to regain momentum and seize control of key cities.

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