How Secure Are Russia's Chemical Weapons?

The State Scientific Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology in Moscow, Russia, March 14, 2018. REUTERS/Tatyana Makeyeva

Reuters: Secret trial shows risks of nerve agent theft in post-Soviet chaos: experts

The British government says Russia is to blame for poisoning former spy Sergei Skripal with a nerve agent, and most chemical weapons specialists agree.

But they say an alternative explanation cannot be ruled out: that the nerve agent got into the hands of people not acting for the Russian state.

The Soviet Union’s chemical weapons programme was in such disarray in the aftermath of the Cold War that some toxic substances and know-how could have got into the hands of criminals, say people who dealt with the programme at the time.

“Could somebody have smuggled something out?” said Amy Smithson, a biological and chemical weapons expert.

“I certainly wouldn’t rule that possibility out, especially a small amount and particularly in view of how lax the security was at Russian chemical facilities in the early 1990s.”

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WNU Editor: Yes .... Russia was a mess after the fall of the Soviet Union, and yes .... stockpiles of chemical weapons (and God only knows what else) were not secure.  But I doubt that someone decided 25 years ago to steal the precursors for these agents, store it properly for 25 years, and then use it to target a former Russian spy in Britain. That makes no sense. What makes sense is that the victim was a former Russian intelligence agent, and that he was almost killed by a nerve agent that has a long Russian history. What is not known is who specifically ordered the hit .... and are Russia's weapon stockpiles secure.