A chemist who directly worked with Novichok in the Soviet Union chimes in on the difficulties of deploying and weaponizing the chemical weapon and how it would be next to impossible without direct State support.
Also he states the Skripal chemicals are definitely new stock as the Soviet era weapons would likely have degraded beyond the point of usability.
So Putin would have had to recently authorize the production of these chemical weapons and no other state would have had the expertise to produce the stuff. That's a pretty direct assessment.
Quote:
Vil Mirzayanov, 83, said the chemical was too dangerous for anyone but a “high-level senior scientist” to handle and that even he – who worked for 30 years inside the secret military installation where novichok was developed and gained extensive personal experience in handling the agent – would not know how to weaponize it.
He said he did not see how a criminal organization or other non-state group could pull off such an attack.
“It’s very, very tough stuff,” Mirzayanov told the Guardian at his home in New Jersey, where he has lived in exile since 1996. “I don’t believe it.
“You need a very high-qualified professional scientist,” he continued. “Because it is dangerous stuff. Extremely dangerous. You can kill yourself. First of all you have to have a very good shield, a very particular container. And after that to weaponize it – weaponize it is impossible without high technical equipment. It’s impossible to imagine.”
Mirzayanov further said that there was probably no current stockpile of novichok to steal, because it has a limited shelf life and the preferred form would be a binary version in which two relatively benign, non-banned substances were mixed to produce novichok.
“The final product, in storage, after one year is already losing 2%, 3%. The next year more, and the next year more. In 10-15 years, it’s no longer effective.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...mist?CMP=fb_gu