Moscow on Friday rejected a British news report that the nerve agent used in the poisoning of a former double agent originated from a town on Russia’s Volga river.
On Thursday, The Times newspaper cited British security sources saying they believed the so-called Novichok chemical was manufactured at the Shikhany facility in central Russia’s Saratov region.
“This laboratory was never part of the scope of our work,” Mikhail Babich, the Kremlin’s envoy in the Volga Federal District, told Interfax news agency.
“All the bases where chemical weapons were stored are well-known. Shikhany is not one of them,” said Babich, who is the former chairman of the state commission for chemical disarmament.
He added that there used to be a different “facility” in the Saratov region but it was not located in Shikhany.
The Times said the facility was the Russian equivalent of Britain’s Porton Down defence laboratory. The closed town of Shikhany is the location of a branch of the State Scientific Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology, or GNIIOKhT.