In his Nato letter, Sedwill said the nerve agent novichok had been developed at the Russian research facility in Shikhany as part of an offensive chemical weapons programme with the codename Foliant.
Sedwill said Russia regarded at least some of its defectors as “legitimate targets for assassination”, with the suggestion that they could include Skripal, a former member of the GRU, Russian military intelligence, who was convicted by Russia of espionage in 2004 after working for
MI6.
“We have information indicating Russian intelligence service interest in the Skripals, dating back at least as far as 2013, when email accounts belonging to Yulia Skripal were targeted by GRU cyber specialists,” Sedwill wrote.
He also said: “During the 2000s, Russia commenced a programme to test means of delivering chemical warfare agents and to train personnel from special units in the use of these weapons. This programme subsequently included investigation of ways of delivering nerve agents, including by application to door handles. Within the last decade, Russia has produced and stockpiled small quantities of novichoks under the same programme.”
He said Russia had continued developing small amounts of novichok over the past decade.
“Russia’s chemical weapons programme continued after the collapse of the Soviet Union. By 1993, when Russia signed the chemical weapons convention (CWC), it is likely that some novichoks had passed acceptance testing, allowing their use by the Russian military,” he said.
“Russia’s CWC declaration failed to report any work on novichoks. Russia further developed some novichoks after ratifying the convention. In the mid-2000s, President [Vladimir] Putin was closely involved in the Russian chemical weapons programme. It is highly unlikely that any former Soviet republic (other than Russia) pursued an offensive chemical weapons programme after independence. It is unlikely that novichoks could be made and deployed by non-state actors (eg a criminal or terrorist group).”
