Assassination of Alexei Navalny: How do toxic neuroprotective agents affect the human body?

 The German government says Alexei Navalny, Russia's main opposition leader, has been given the nerve-wracking poison "Novichok." Russian opposition leader Navalny's health deteriorated during a flight in the Russian region of Serbia, after which he was flown to Berlin, Germany, for treatment. He has been in a coma ever since.

His friends have accused him of being poisoned at the behest of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Russia's Kremlin has denied the allegations in a statement issued Friday stating "Similar, baseless allegations concerning Russia's intelligence have been made more than once.

The last time a poison called Navichok made headlines was in 2018 when Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy, and his daughter were attacked in Britain.

In the 1970s and 1980s, some new toxins that affected the nerves were given this name in the Soviet Union. They are considered fourth-generation chemical weapons and were further developed in a Soviet program called Foliant. The presence of the poison was announced by Dr. Will Mirzayanov through the Russian media in the 1990s. He later fled to the United States, where he published a chemical formula for the poison in his book. In 1999, US officials visited Uzbekistan, where they helped dismantle a former Soviet Union's largest chemical weapons testing center. According to Dr. Mirzayanov, Russian authorities used to make small-scale Navichok agents and conduct tests at the same center. Their goal was to evade international inspectors.

Some neuroprotective agents are thought to be five to eight times more toxic than nerve agents VX. Gary Stevens, a professor at the University of Reading, said: "These are far more dangerous than sirens or VX agents and are more difficult to detect." Dr. Mirzayanov says it is not so toxic after many months.

But Vladimir Iglev, a scientist who claims to have invented the novice agent he used against former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, says the toxin is highly stable and has been stored for a long time. Can be done, especially if it is kept in a closed box. Other scientists say that these chemicals can be stored not only for months but also for years.

Andrea Sella, a professor at University College London, says they do not evaporate, nor do they dissolve in water. The problem is that research on Navichok has been reduced and there is no official information in this regard.

There are many types of novice poisons

Although many neoplastic poisons are in liquid form, many of them are also found in solid form. This means that they can be spread in extremely fine powder.

Some agents are also said to be binary weapons. That is, they are placed in two different components and then mixed together so that it can be easily stored and transported. When mixed, they produce a poison. Professor Stevens says this is also done because the ingredients are not banned. Novice poisons are more toxic than other chemicals so some of them start to take effect immediately, such as in 30 seconds or two minutes. They enter the body mainly through the respiratory tract or esophagus, but they can also reach the body through the skin.

 Is it possible that someone other than Russia developed it?

Dr. Mirzayanov believes that Russia was involved in the assassination attempt on Sergei Skripal because "this is the country that invented it, has its experience and uses it as a weapon." Russia's ambassador to the United Nations It says work on these Soviet-era agents was halted in 1992 and that stores in the past were completely destroyed in 2018. In September 2019, the World Organization for Chemical Weapons (OPCW) confirmed that 39,967 tons of chemical weapons had been destroyed by Russia. But the novice poison was never declared to the OPCW because of its uncertainty about its chemical formula.