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El gráfico muestra la cronología del arsenal de armas químicas de Rusia.
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Arsenal de armas químicas de Rusia

March 16, 2018 - Se cree que el Instituto Estatal de Investigación Científica de Química y Tecnología Orgánica de la era soviética es la fuente de la familia de agentes nerviosos "“Novichok” que fueron usados, según sostiene Gran Bretaña, enel envenenamiento del exespía ruso Sergey Skripal y su hija Yulia.

The institute’s 12-storey headquarters, known by the acronym GosNIIOKhT, is in south-east Moscow near the Aviamotornaya metro station and infamous KGB-FSB Lefortovo Prison.

In June 1990, during President Mikhail Gorbachev’s period of “perestroika” and “glasnost” (openness), Russia and the U.S. signed a bilateral U.S.–Soviet Chemical Weapons Accord.

In October 1991, Dr Vil Mirzayanov, a Soviet chemical weapons scientist who later turned whistleblower, revealed that Moscow had developed a series of new and extremely lethal “third generation” of binary nerve agents at GosNIIOKhT, under a secret programme code-named “Foliant.”

The reason being that the U.S. had successfully developed its Bigeye BLU-80B bomb -- a binary weapon to disperse nerve agent VX. Binary armaments contain two substances separately that mix to produce a lethal agent.

Mirzayanov claimed that the Kremlin planned to continue producing binary weapons after signing the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) in 1993, using commercially available organophosphates used as fertilisers and insecticides.

Months after the CWC was signed, Novichok-7 was developed, produced and tested in Shikhany, a “closed” town and military research establishment in central Russia. Novichok-7 is about seven times more deadly than soman.

In 1992 Mirzayanov was jailed on charges of treason. He has been living in exile in New Jersey since the 1990s.

In 2004 President Vladimir Putin signed a decree making the GosNIIOKhT institute one of Russia’s strategic defence industries.

Sources
PUBLISHED: 16/03/2018; STORY: Graphic News; PICTURES: Associated Press
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