Novichok Nerve Agent Poisoning

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32644-1/fulltext

by georgecmu • 6 years ago

96 49 6 years ago

thelancet.com

bt1a• 6 years ago

Does anyone have a link to the full text?

jsheard• 6 years ago

https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)32644-1

Clewza3132• 6 years ago

Damn, this is worth a read. Among many other things, the day after poisoning his body temperature was 34 deg C (!) and heart rate only 44 bpm. The poor guy was on a ventilator for 24 days, and would almost certainly have died if not mechanically ventilated within 2 hours. It's downright astonishing that he recovered as well as he did.

How many people would willingly return to the lion's den where this happened to them?

sl1ck731• 6 years ago

Presumably the folks behind this would know that he was being transferred to Germany. I wonder why they would not have prevented it through some bureaucracy? Is it common for critically ill Russians to be transferred to Germany? Just seems like something that would have to go through a lot of channels to get done, but I have no experience in healthcare.

kamranjon• 6 years ago

If you watch Navalny's video on this he explains that they likely assumed it was out if his body after 2 days and is why he was allowed to be airlifted out.

nikivi2• 6 years ago

The things happening in Russia before the protest on Saturday is dystopian. Police take into custody anyone who is trying to promote it, schools are suddenly open and students are being scared by threats of disqualification if they go outside on that day.

I hope this dictatorship ends soon. I wouldn’t want to live in a country where nearly all your taxes get spent on building a palace and enforcing more police and military.

If anyone is curious on what’s happening, I made a Twitter list. Most tweets are in Russian though.

https://twitter.com/i/lists/1351120526220152839

Oh yeah and some russian citizens who are members of Navalny anti corruption fond are told by government to leave their own country..

AstralStorm2• 6 years ago

As long as third of Russia wants a Tsar (or another authoritarian strong man) some other 20% want USSR back (remember how corrupt that was too) and most of the rest is silent nothing will change there. Oppression was standard in both of these setups.

gdy3• 6 years ago

"I wouldn’t want to live in a country where nearly all your taxes get spent on building a palace and enforcing more police and military."

I wouldn't want to have UKOS returned to the owners who got it dirt-cheap during 'privatization' in 90s and taxes on the extraction of natural resources reduced to the pre-Putin level. This one thing -- raising taxes on the wealth generated from selling natural resources -- pays a hundred times for Putin's palace.

As for our military, I'd rather have it strong, why wouldn't you?

hvis• 6 years ago

That extracted wealth should flow back into the country and translate into well-being of your citizens.

Not just continue lining the pockets of the president's closest friends.

I'd rather have our military strong on the borders of our country and outside of it. Instead of having that military power used to strong-arm Russian citizens (and yes, the opposition is among them).

twelve40• 6 years ago

"nearly all your taxes get spent on building a palace"

hyperbole much? like, really?

"all your taxes" - 12 trillion roubles, roughly $171 billion in one year out of the total federal budget of ~20 trillion roubles ($285 billion) Федеральная налоговая служба администрировала за год доходы на 12 трлн 612,13 млрд рублей https://www.interfax.ru/business/691856

the palace, whoever owns it, cost ~$1.5 billion, presumably over 15 years > Стоимость дворца с постройками ФБК оценивает в 100 миллиардов рублей

"siloviki" budget - 2 trillion roubles, ~$28 billion https://www.rbc.ru/politics/23/10/2016/580a526d9a7947cb56546...

military budget - $65 billion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...

Let's do some math: $28 billion for the "police" $65 billion for the military (U.S. spends ~$700 billion of the total federal budget of $3.9 trillion for FY2018, that's about ~20%, about the same) $1.5 billion for the "palace"

None of this stuff combined is "nearly all your taxes", so why would you claim something like that? "more police and military" seems to be no different then what the other countries are doing. The dude might have stolen this palace, but why would you make nonsensical claims?

nikivi2• 6 years ago

The palace is just one event. Lots more money gets stolen not for the sake of building a palace but enriching few individuals in various other ways.

It is a hyperbole indeed and thank you for the detailed breakdown. The truth is, if not 'nearly all', it's certainly a very sizable portion of the tax budget that gets stolen. Enjoyed this video on the topic from one politician in Moscow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMWyzudWioY

Also on the topic of breakdowns that you cited, I have hard time believing things that get written in these 'official reports'. There are many ways to hide where money actually gets spent. This also gets talked about in the above video.

Clewza3132• 6 years ago

Bit of an aside, but it's odd how convention forces the journal to pretend the patient is anonymous ("a 44-year-old man") despite all the other details making it blatantly obviously that it's Navalny. Of course, from a strictly medical point of view the name is irrelevant, but the context does matter: for example, the chronology of exactly how & when he was poisoned is still not entirely clear.

inoffensivename• 6 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=24&v=gO3Y_IlPyXc

tyingq2• 6 years ago

Polonium, Dioxin, Novichok. I wonder what they use when they want to be more stealthy about it.

travisoneill1• 6 years ago

Polonium is actually very stealthy. It's an alpha emitter which is not detectable by most equipment, and it was very nearly not detected even by the UK government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvine...

tyingq2• 6 years ago

Well, yes and no. Like "The traces were found in passenger jets[44][45] BA875 and BA873 from Moscow to Heathrow"

MagnumOpus• 6 years ago

They don't want or need to be stealthy. But when they don't want to send a message, most recently they seem to use stabbing, shooting, throwing out of high-rise windows:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_...

nabla92• 6 years ago

If Russia would like to kill people discretely, they would could use various other venom's and poisons. Ricin, for example.

Russians use Novichok or Polonium because they are signature weapons that signal everyone that Russian intelligence agencies were involved. Polonium is FSB's signature. Novichok is chemical weapon in the hands of military, so G.U. (GRU).

dilyevsky• 6 years ago

Ricin is easily screened for. Novichok not so much until recently. Who knows how many people they had poisoned we don’t know about. Bellingcat research suggests that a lot. Polonium wouldn’t have been detected if not for some radiology expert who accidentally listened in on some side conversation

Natsu• 6 years ago

The paper discusses this a bit:

Identification of an individual organophosphorus compound is a complex and time-consuming process. [9] In fact, ascertaining the involvement of a novichok agent and its biotransformation products in this case was only achieved several days after establishing the diagnosis of cholinesterase inhibitor poisoning and did not affecttherapeutic decisions.Organophosphorus nerve agents exert the same mechanism of action as do organophosphorus pesti-cides (ie, inhibition of acetylcholinesterase) and clinical management is largely based on experience with organo-phosphorus pesticide poisonings, which still pose a major health burden in southeast Asia, with more than 100000 deaths per year. [10] Clinical diagnosis of organophosphorus poisoning should be straightforward.

---

[9] John H, van der Schans MJ, Koller M, et al. Fatal sarin poisoning in Syria 2013: forensic verification within an international laboratory network. Forensic Toxicol 2018; 36: 61–71.

[10] Mew EJ, Padmanathan P, Konradsen F, et al. The global burden of fatal self-poisoning with pesticides 2006–15: systematic review. J Affect Disord 2017; 219: 93–104.

stretchcat• 6 years ago

Consider the assassination of Mahmoud Al-Mabbouh. It was intended to look like a natural death, without raising suspicions. To do this, they snuck into his hotel room, injected him with a muscle relaxant, then suffocated him. It took local authorities ten days to realize it was actually a murder. They did eventually figure it out, but I don't think it's hard to imagine intelligence agencies have done similar things before and gotten away with it. In the case of Litvinenko, authorities were pretty sure he'd been poisoned from the onset. The poisoning drew a whole lot of attention that Russia probably could have avoided if they intended to be subtle.

nabla92• 6 years ago

That was just one example.

My point is that there are not other users of Novichok and using Polonium is also extremely rare. Ricin is relatively easy to get. They continue using these techniques for high valued targets who are immediately tested for these two.

kyrieeschaton4• 6 years ago

It's odd to hold as an assumption that the Russian government is the only entity that can synthesize this molecule.

It's also odd to take the word of "a laboratory of the German armed forces" as some sort of independent source in a clear political conflict.

longtimegoogler2• 6 years ago

It's not that odd if you consider that Germany is a democracy and Russia is a dictatorship with a history of poisoning dissenters.

Read the story about this mathematician who has been sentenced to prison for 6 years in Russia. https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/01/22/imprisoned-for-his-e...

At some point, we have to use some sort of priors to evaluate the truth of claims from various sources.

kyrieeschaton4• 6 years ago

Security agencies of democratic regimes (that happen to be marginally accountable to the people elected) don't have the ability to synthesize known molecules and use them for political purposes? They don't have the ability to lie under the piercing eyes of lady liberty? That's sort of what they exist for.

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/04/cia-director-used-fake...

_jal• 6 years ago

Do you have any evidence that other entities are using 'this molecule'?

As for being distrustful of Germany, well, you're of course free to make your own determinations there, as are everyone else that have been watching both nations. Personally, if one of Rainbow Vlad's minions told me the sky is blue, I'd have to double check.

kyrieeschaton4• 6 years ago

Sure, here's an example of the CIA flatly lying about a separate novichok incident.

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/04/cia-director-used-fake...

thrwway342• 6 years ago

It's not "a laboratory of the German armed forces". And it's not "clear political conflict" - it's Russia lying about destroying their chemical weapons and instead using them in Europe and UK - see Navalny and Skripal.

Paradigma11• 6 years ago

Might be but what entities are able to carry out such an attack in Tomsk: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tomsk,+Tomsk+Oblast,+Russi...

"The rare Westerner in Tomsk will be met with wariness and curiosity, though seldom hostility."https://www.tripsavvy.com/tomsk-the-hidden-russia-1502232

Especially while Nawalny was under heavy FSB observation. And why did the russians "not find" any traces of Novichok? Why did the russians not start a massive investigation but have to wait for the official german report in the correct format or whatever.

If there would have been any possibility at all this being a false flag or a charade by Nawalny the city and airplane would be one big CSI labor.

bigdict• 6 years ago

Publish or perish.

wyldfire• 6 years ago

In case you missed it: Navalny found conclusive evidence of a cover-up for his poisoning [1] [2] [3]. But the best part is how he did it: caller ID spoof + social engineering. IMO exploiting the authoritarian nature/culture was really clever. Every time Kudryavtsev demurs about revealing more details, Navalny (as Ustinov) calls him by his full name. To me, it sounds like he's threatening him or reminding him of their relative position in the hierarchy. Each time, Kudryavtsev continues to spill the beans and give up co-conspirators.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/21/world/europe/russia-naval...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibqiet6Bg38

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwvA49ZXnf8

dimator• 6 years ago

I'm amazed at the amateur nature of the guy on that call. If he's GRU/FSB trained, why would he trust a caller ID from base, and nothing else? Surely there's better opsec than this.

sam_lowry_2• 6 years ago

A fish rots from the head. These GRU/FSB boys enjoy complete immunity from prosecution, why would they stay professional if only loyalty is rewarded?

LittlePeter• 6 years ago

I think when you have so many FSB agents it is hard to maintain the quality.

See for example here, where a bunch of FSB agent graduates decided to celebrate in the open: https://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/11/world/geliki-russia-fsb-j...

jannes2• 6 years ago

I think that specific agent was a chemist who was in charge of applying the poison (which is apparently so dangerous that experts have to do it). He likely didn’t get the full GRU/FSB training.

waypoint1002• 6 years ago

It's amazing that people really believe in these conspiracy theories about evil Russian government which tries to kill people with Novichok, an agent so powerful that it cant kill anyone.

There are much more simple and effective ways. E.g. just hire a street thug, pretend a robbery

jannes2• 6 years ago

Did you not see the YouTube video where one of the agents admits it on the phone and describes the process?

I thought it was already established that Russia did this beyond reasonable doubt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwvA49ZXnf8

waypoint1002• 6 years ago

Well if you watch that carefully, you'd see that Navalny pushing hard his version of events on that other guy, who pretty much responds mostly "I don't know much".

Now imagine a situation that bellingcat picked up this poor guy, who might be nothing but part of surveillance team and carefully staged this phone record to create an impression that the guy is some sort of a hitman.

In the West people might think that Navalny is a prominent opposition hero, but in reality he's known to be a some sort of "attention whore", has a limited popularity

Novichok Nerve Agent Poisoning

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