On Monday, British Prime Minister Theresa May addressed Parliament. She accused Russians of using a nerve agent to try to kill Sergei Skripal, a Russian military intelligence officer turned British double agent, and his daughter Yulia. Vil Mirzayanov, a scientist and later head of Foreign Technical Counterintelligence at the State Scientific Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology (GosNIIOKhT) in Moscow in the 1970s and 1980s, participated in the making of binary nerve agents known as “novichoks.” He has a message for Skripal and his daughter: “I’m very sorry that I participated in the development of these weapons.” GosNIIOKhT scientists developed the nerve agent back in the 1980s under a program codenamed “Folio.” Mirzayanov spoke out about the covert program as the Soviet Union fell, and was jailed for it before he escaped to exile in the United States. The nerve agent was originally designed for use in bombs and shells on a battlefield rather than an assassination.
“I couldn’t imagine. No one could imagine. It’s outrageous. We were convinced at the time that we were developing these weapons and testing others for the protection of the country and for defense,” Mirzayanov said to The Daily Beast. “It was not our goal. None of the scientists supposed that it would be used with terrorist goals. It was a military thing. It was a weapon for mass killing.”
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