Poisonous affairs: Russia’s evolving use of poison in covert operations

ABSTRACT

The August 2020 poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexi Navalny once again put the spotlight on Russia’s poison program. However, although individual poisonings may draw considerable coverage, little attention has been paid to Russia’s overall pattern of using poison. By comprehensively cataloguing credibly reported poisonings since the 1920s, this paper seeks to understand how Russia’s intelligence services use poison and how their motivations have evolved over the past 100 years. In doing so, the paper establishes a typology of use and highlights evolving trends. Collated data show that the number of incidents is far higher than commonly realized and that the rise in suspected poisonings in post-Soviet Russia is likely related to the rise of Russian kleptocracy, which has allowed members of Russia’s new elite to enrich themselves financially but leaves them vulnerable to charges of corruption. Poison is attractive to Russia’s intelligence services primarily because it offers a discreet way of silencing those who may threaten the new elite and the status quo. However, the use of poison abroad has also precipitated increased awareness of Russia’s continuing research on poison, the use of which has led to international sanctions and widescale diplomatic expulsions. Historical precedent suggests this increased attention may temporarily reduce Russia’s use of poison abroad, although Moscow is likely to retain its extensive poison capabilities. Indeed, growing awareness of suspected poisonings and Moscow’s increasing embrace of implausible deniability has the secondary benefit of intimidating domestic audiences. Thus, in the long run, Moscow’s use of poison—particularly against domestic threats and defectors—is unlikely to be deterred by foreign intervention.

KEYWORDS:

• Russia
• Putin
• poisons
• chemical weapons
• Novichok
• radiological weapons
• polonium
• corruption
• targeted killing

Introduction

On August 20, 2020, Russian opposition leader Alexi Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok chemical weapon agent.¹ Navalny’s case is not isolated, and the use of a sophisticated poison against him mirrors high-profile attacks on former Russian Military Intelligence (GRU) officer Sergei Skripal in 2018 and former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer Alexander Litvinenko in 2006.

The use of clandestine force to protect regime interests is a long-established part of Russian statecraft.² However, the Soviet Union largely stopped foreign assassinations after Bogdan Stashinsky, an operative of the Committee for State Security (KGB), defected to West Germany in 1961. After Stashinsky defected, West German authorities put him on trial for the previous murder of two Ukrainian nationalist leaders on German territory. During the trial, Stashinsky revealed sensational details of Moscow’s secret assassination program.³ This was highly embarrassing to Moscow and resulted in greater restrictions on the use of foreign assassinations. Nonetheless, as the Navalny, Skripal, and Litvinenko poisonings suggest, since Vladimir Putin came to power in 1999, poison has re-emerged as a tool of Russian statecraft. Although some individual poisonings may garner considerable coverage and be well understood, the motivating factors behind removing “undesirable individuals” are too often seen as self-evident, and little attention has been paid to Moscow’s overall pattern of poison use.

This article seeks to address this gap and aims to understand the various factors that motivate Moscow’s use of poison and how these have evolved. It draws on Gregory D. Koblentz’s model of “regime security,” which emphasizes the role of internal security threats in the decision by states to acquire and use chemical and biological weapons—particularly where actors lack domestic legitimacy.⁴ However, it observes that there are organizational, logistical, and doctrinal differences between the use of chemical weapons (CW) by a state’s armed forces and the use of poison by intelligence services, and possibly even private actors, in the targeted killing and repression of domestic opponents. After cataloguing credibly reported poisonings since the Soviet poison program began in the 1920s, the article argues that poison has long formed part of a wider Russian tool kit for covert “special tasks.” However, under Communism, poison was reserved for people whom the regime wanted to attack discreetly. These included leading dissenters or foreign leaders within the Soviet sphere of influence who threatened to disrupt the status quo. Defectors also form a special category because of their perceived betrayal. Nonlethal (or “soft”) chemicals were used to support such missions—for example, to interrogate a target or to facilitate their kidnapping. The exception to this overall pattern came under the regime of Joseph Stalin, during which poison was used by the Soviet state against a broad base of perceived threats, including threats to Stalin’s personal interests and possibly to the interests of his intelligence chiefs.

The survey also shows that since Putin came to power in 1999, the number of reported poisonings has sharply risen, to the extent that, in 20 years, Putin has overseen more poisonings than any other Russian/Soviet leader. The number of reported poisonings is now comparable to that in the Soviet Union’s entire 70-year lifetime. This increase is likely driven by the rise and consolidation of Russian kleptocracy,⁵ dubbed the “Mafia state,”⁶ in which Russian elites have abused their hold on state assets and institutions to enrich themselves. The rise of a kleptocratic state has expanded regime interests to include financial interests, in addition to domestic political power. In turn, this has widened perceived threats to include journalists, anti-corruption campaigners, and others who may threaten the powerful by, for example, revealing corrupt or scandalous practices.

An initial attraction

The Soviet poison program began during the Russian Revolution (1917–23), with the establishment of the “Special Room” or “Kamera” in 1921.⁷ This was a time of civil war, and the revolution faced significant internal and external opposition. Indeed, on August 30, 1918, Bolshevik party leader Vladimir Lenin was shot by Fanya Kaplan, a member of the rival Socialist Revolutionary Party, who believed that Lenin and the Bolsheviks had betrayed the revolution. At the time, the bullets were believed to have been poisoned with curare, a poisonous resin. Although reports that the bullets were poisoned were subsequently refuted, Lenin was nonetheless provided with reports on the incident and curare.⁸ Historian Boris Volodarsky, a former Soviet intelligence officer, suggests this sparked Lenin’s “fascination” with poisons and was a main reason that “[t]hree years later, in 1921, the first poison laboratory was established—right in Lenin’s own secretariat.”⁹

Although the extent of Lenin’s personal interest is speculative, poison may also have been attractive for numerous practical reasons. Poison is a discreet tool that allows malicious hands to remain hidden, or at least plausibly denied. Compared with bullets or bombs, poison may minimize suspicion of foul play so that malicious actors can seek to avoid raising popular sympathy for the victim and any rallying effects that might otherwise occur. Individuals deemed by state authorities to be problematic could be removed through other low-profile methods, but poison may be less risky than methods such as intimidation, false imprisonment, and staged accidents, particularly if those individuals are based abroad. This is because the delayed onset of symptoms provides time for an operative to escape, while also minimizing operational footprints and thus decreasing the risk of detection. Perpetrators of an attack may also seek a range of tools so that operations can be tailored to specific circumstances, and varying the techniques can help disguise patterns of otherwise suspicious deaths. By varying covert techniques, and by developing poisons that leave few traces, suspicions of foul play can be kept to small communities of concerned individuals.

As Volodarsky notes, “putting aside strict scientific classification,” chemicals used covertly and maliciously may be divided into two categories—“soft chemicals” and “deadly poisons.”¹⁰ As substances that kill and harm through their toxic effects, poisons are akin to CW—defined by the Chemical Weapon Convention (CWC) as “[m]unitions and devices, specifically designed to cause death or other harm through the[ir] toxic properties.”¹¹ However, rather than the large-scale and indiscriminate use commonly associated with CW, poisons instead see localized use. Some poisons may have CW potential, but not all. Moreover, just as not all CW are lethal, “soft chemicals,” too, are not designed to kill, but may fulfill numerous roles, such as being used to “frighten the victim, or to incapacitate him or her temporarily to prevent a particular activity.”¹² Such properties are useful in aiding forced renditions, aiding interrogations, or administering nonlethal punishments.

Despite the apparent benefits, using poison may also have drawbacks. In addition to any potential moral objections individuals or state leaders may have, using poison is operationally demanding, requiring real-time knowledge of an intended victim’s location and habits.¹³ Moreover, unless forcibly applied, poison must be surreptitiously applied to a victim’s foodstuffs or other items they may come into physical contact with. This may be problematic because consumption of a full dose cannot be guaranteed. There also are difficulties in the opposite direction: incorrect dosage may accidentally kill a victim, especially if the goal is only to sedate them.¹⁴

The Russian program

After its establishment under Lenin’s personal secretariat, the Kamera soon transferred to the Soviet intelligence service, through which it went through various reorganizations and renamings—from the “Kamera” to “Laboratory 1,” “Laboratory 12,” and “Lab X.”¹⁵ Despite these administrative changes, the laboratory’s mission “to find a poison devoid of any taste or smell that could not be detected in the victim’s body after death” has remained the same.¹⁶ It is noteworthy that this program predates, and is organizationally distinct from, the Soviet chemical- and biological-weapons programs, which have their roots in the 1925 Military-Chemical Defence Committee (VOKhIMU).¹⁷ As a result, it is probable that Lab X’s work was done in parallel with military research on chemical and biological weapons but was still able to benefit from that research.

In the 1950s, after a temporary closure during the previous decade,¹⁸ the laboratory moved from the Lubyanka intelligence headquarters to No. 2 Academician Varga Street on the outskirts of Moscow.¹⁹ Outwardly named the “Central Scientific Research Institute for Special Technology” (or “Research Institute No. 2”—“NII-2”), Lab X was attached to the KGB’s Operational Technical Directorate (OTU).²⁰ Although the KGB has since been reorganized, it is likely that research on poisons, narcotics, and psychotropic substances continues at the site. US sanctions enacted after Navalny’s August 2020 poisoning suggest the directorate is now named the FSB’s “Special Technology Center,” which controls the FSB’s Criminalistics Institute.²¹ The institute appears to be Lab X with various aliases—including “Military Unit 34435,” “Research Institute-2,” and “NII-2”—all of which are based at No. 2 Academician Varga Street.²²

In addition to Lab X, Russia’s military intelligence service—the GRU—has also sought its own poisons capability. This appears to be a relatively recent development based on the Foliant program, which developed Novichok in the late 1980s. Although the State Union Scientific Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology (GSNIIOKhT) was subsequently converted to civilian use and renamed as Russia’s “Scientific Institute for Organic Chemistry and Technology” (GosNIIOHT),²³ research led by the nongovernmental investigative organization Bellingcat suggests that work on Novichok has continued, with military scientists “dispersed into several research entities which continued collaborating among one another in a clandestine, distributed R&D program.”²⁴ Accordingly, since 2010, the St. Petersburg State Institute for Experimental Military Medicine of the Ministry of Defense (GNII VM) has likely taken the lead in developing and weaponizing Novichok, “likely with the assistance of researchers from the Scientific Center Signal (‘SC Signal’).”²⁵ This is seemingly in collaboration with Military Unit 29155, “a secretive sub-unit” of the GRU, and two institutes involved in Novichok’s original development—GosNIIOHT and the 33rd Central Experimental Institute for Scientific Research of the Ministry of Defense, in Shikhany.²⁶ The organizational relationship of the FSB and GRU programs to each other remains unclear, although it is assumed here to be competitive. The assertion that the GRU has also been involved in researching poison is further supported by sanctions imposed by the European Union, including the January 2019 sanctioning of four GRU members for their role in the 2018 attack on Sergei Skripal.²⁷

In addition to new state-based programs, elements of Russia’s private-security industry also appear to have experimented with using poison. In October 2018, Novaya Gazeta—one of Russia’s last remaining independent newspapers—published testimony from a whistleblower associated with Yevgeny Prigozhin,²⁸ a close Putin associate and head of the Wagner Group, a Russian private military company. Prigozhin’s firms oversee various national and international security contracts and, according to Novaya Gazeta, have been involved in at least two domestic poisonings. If this is true, such operations mark a sinister escalation in domestic repression while also further complicating external analysis. So do insinuations that individuals—such as Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Gebrev—have been poisoned by members of the state security apparatus at the behest of Russian oligarchs. In Gebrev’s case, it is speculated that he was poisoned “to prevent the acquisition of [arms company] Dunarit,” which was “one of the most valuable assets of the then freshly bankrupt Corporate Commercial Bank (Corpbank).”²⁹

Methodology: researching reported incidents

To understand how Moscow’s use of poison has evolved, a dataset of suspected poisonings was compiled. This drew upon an extensive literature review of reported poisonings within Russia and its “near abroad” (that is, Moscow’s perceived sphere of influence in countries of the former Soviet Union) and of foreign-based dissidents. Press reports were supplemented with declassified Western intelligence reports, academic journals, autobiographies, and various other histories to help build a comprehensive dataset and minimize the chances of missing events. As a result, 134 poison-related instances of use involving 166 people as victims were found between January 1924 and November 2021.

However, building datasets is complex and time consuming, and it is possible that cases have been missed from the literature review and not been included. Similarly, many deliberate state-ordered poisonings may be missing from the dataset because they remain secret and unreported. In addition, assassination orders are treated with intense secrecy and there is a heavy reliance by historians on individual testimony. This may be problematic—particularly with historical events—because events may be misremembered or deliberately misrepresented.

There is also the possibility that some instances of natural illness or death may be present in the dataset. This is because not all suspected poisonings will be actual poisonings. Balancing omission and incorrect inclusion is difficult but, as noted by historian Amy Knight, “One suspicious murder may be dismissed as a coincidence, but … many [suspicious] crimes form a familiar pattern.”³⁰ Patterns of use form one of the few visible indicators, and suspicions of poisonings cannot be dismissed outright.

To account for these issues, incidents were coded against several criteria. Rather than seeking to prove individual cases, the author used “credibly reported” or confirmed cases. Credibly reported incidents here rely on the judgment of authoritative sources (such as reputable newspapers, analysts, or historians) that Russian intelligence used (or considered using) poison. Press restrictions in much of the post-Soviet space meant the perceived authority of many sources was subject to the author’s judgment. To be considered a confirmed case of poisoning, it had to be supported by medical or documentary evidence. Reports that did not meet these criteria were recorded but excluded from analysis. Similarly, where subsequent investigation showed credible alternatives to poisonings, these were coded as “plausible alternative explanation” and also excluded. The criteria for each level are given in Table 1. Not everyone will agree with the author’s assessment of the credibility of individual incidents, but the pattern of activity identified through this research does not depend on the validity of any specific case.

Table 1. Confidence intervals for reported incidents of poisonings

Analytical threshold	Rating	Rating criteria
Included	Confirmed	Description of deaths as poisoning is substantiated by medical, archival, or direct testimonial.
	Credible report	Deaths are described as poisoning by authoritative news sources or historians.
Excluded	Not credible report	Deaths are described as poisoning by news sources, but the sources are not deemed authoritative.
	Plausible alternative explanation	A plausible alternative explanation or scenario has been registered.

After applying these thresholds, and further excluding cases where chemical agents were used in kidnappings and interrogations, or conducted by other governments, the dataset was reduced to 95 credibly reported instances of use, involving 122 people, where poison has been used (or considered for use) since Lab X was established in 1921. However, some people were poisoned multiple times, while one instance of use may have poisoned several people (often unintentionally). Taking these possibilities into account, the final dataset includes 134 “events” (see Table 2).

From this dataset, it is possible to derive six broad rationales for the use of poison across the Soviet and post-Soviet periods: regime threats (a broad category that includes perceived threats to the individual and collective interests of the ruling elite), revenge (against defectors), strategic political threats (for example, disruptive leaders in Russia’s near abroad), armed threats (for example, armed insurgents or organized resistance from nationalist groups), fraternal support (when Moscow actively supported the regime interests of other Communist states), and opportunistic use (in support of various mission objectives). In addition to these six categories, the dataset includes a seventh category of unintended casualties and an eighth category of cases in which the rationale remains unclear. Although these are imperfect categories—particularly where there are multiple and overlapping rationales—it nonetheless appears that, once Lab X was established, leadership attitudes became the dominant factors in decisions to use poison, with the autonomy of the intelligence services a smaller but still important factor. Indeed, as detailed below, four major periods can be derived, each associated with a particular leader. In general, successive Soviet leaders reserved poison for targets they preferred to attack discreetly, such as dissenting voices whose overt death or detention could provoke a domestic outcry or foreign leaders within the Soviet sphere of influence who threatened to disrupt the status quo. Defectors were also consistently targeted, the KGB holding a special animosity toward them. They were seen as having betrayed the Motherland, and the “Chekist code of honor” demands revenge against traitors.³¹

The exception to this general approach was in the Stalinist period, when poison was used to protect regime interests against a broad base of perceived threats. A similar trend has emerged under Putin’s leadership, with poisoning supporting both individual and collective interests of the ruling elite. However, the rise of systematic corruption and the formation of the Russian kleptocratic state mean that threats are no longer seen as coming only from rival politicians or party apparatchiks. Instead, individuals poisoned during Putin’s tenure include journalists, anti-corruption campaigners, financiers, and others who may threaten business interests or the elite’s hold on domestic power bases.

Table 2. Numbers of poison-related “events” by leadership period

	Regime threats	Revenge	Armed threats	Strategic political threats	Opportunistic use	Fraternal support	Unintended victims	Unclear motivation	Total
Stalin	20 (2)	4	4	2 (1)	2		7		39 (3)
Khrushchev	1	1	2		1				5
Brezhnev	3	1		3		6 (1)	4		17 (1)
Gorbachev				(1)					0 (1)
Yeltsin	1								1
Putin	19	5	6	3	5		22	4	64
Medvedev	1			1	1				3
Total	45 (2)	11	12	9 (2)	9	6 (1)	33	4	129 (5)

Note: Each reported attack is assigned its own record number and is recorded as an “event” within the dataset. For greater granularity, attacks that affect multiple people are assigned a single record number, and the details of each affected person are coded as separate events within that record. Where individuals are poisoned on multiple occasions, each attack is assigned its own separate record number. Instances where poisons were only considered but no attack was carried out are indicated in parentheses. By this methodology, 90 credibly reported attacks involving 117 people are displayed as 129 events. Five attacks were also considered under various leadership periods but were not carried out.

Stalin: a tool of repression

Under Stalin’s rule, 39 events credibly reported as poisonings were captured in the dataset, as were another three attacks that were considered by Soviet authorities but not carried out. Such poisonings were far more common under Stalin than they were under later Soviet leaders—reflecting the excesses and paranoia of the age. Indeed, the 42 events under Stalin account for some 63 percent of all Soviet poison attacks (66) captured. In most cases under Stalin’s leadership, poison was used to further regime interests against three main types of perceived internal threats: dissidents and other leading figures who could diminish Soviet authority; people seen as personal threats to leading regime members; and individuals who, by virtue of their experience with the Soviet system, could threaten Moscow’s reputation. Soft chemicals were also used to kidnap émigrés, although these are not considered here.

Poisoned dissidents and other leading individuals include cultural leaders such as the author Maxim Gorky,³² ethno-religious leaders such as Theodore Romza and Solomon Mikhoels,³³ and scientific leaders such as Nikolai Koltsov. Although these individuals and others came from diverse backgrounds, they were all influential in their respective fields, if not the Communist Party itself, and able to provide authoritative criticism of Stalin’s policies. In a society where Stalin’s cult of personality was pervasive, personalities and political legitimacy became interlinked; thus, any criticism posed an unacceptable threat to the regime itself. The far-reaching nature of Stalin’s personal intervention can be seen in Koltsov’s removal. Koltsov was a pioneer in genetics and a critic of Trofim Lysenko, whose pseudoscience was endorsed by Stalin but contributed to widespread famine.³⁴ Other examples could include Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin's widow. Although largely removed from political life, by the 1930s she was the “only one single active and influential leader of the anti-Stalinist opposition still alive.”³⁵ Krupskaya conveniently died just before the Eighteenth Party Congress (March 1939) with symptoms consistent with cyanide poisoning.³⁶ Although the Soviet state oversaw considerable means of oppression and had many means of killing or coercing these people, it appears that poison was chosen over other options in these cases because of each individual’s prominent role and a desire to avoid protest or the rallying of their supporters.

As Stalin’s interests came to dominate the Soviet system, protecting his authority merged with the national interest. However, Stalin’s purges also led to an atmosphere in which purely personal interests could be advanced. Moreover, prevailing fear and suspicion combined with the byzantine Soviet bureaucratic structure to create an environment where there were few checks on Stalin’s personal ambitions or on those of Soviet spy chiefs such as Genrikh Yagoda or Lavrentiy Beria. Thus, although leadership attitudes may be the dominant factor in the overall use of poison, the attitudes and autonomy of the intelligence services are also important in explaining the use of poison in the Stalinist period, albeit to a smaller degree. In this context, there are several examples of people being poisoned because of personal considerations, distinct from national interest. For example, it is likely that Yagoda ordered the death of Maxim Peshkov, son of the famous Soviet author Maxim Gorky, to cover up a secret plan to replace Stalin with Sergei Kirov.³⁷ It is also likely that Beria poisoned his rival, Nestor Lakoba—a Communist leader, and close friend of Stalin—at a dinner party.³⁸

Preventing damage to the regime’s reputation is a final element of regime protection: several foreigners caught up in the Soviet prison system were also poisoned, apparently to prevent them talking about their experiences. Both Isaiah Oggins³⁹ and Raoul Wallenberg⁴⁰ were already in custody and could have been executed by other means. Poisons here appear to have been a product of excessive internal secrecy and a means of discreetly removing unwanted individuals, even people already in custody, because the Soviet legal system could not be guaranteed to successfully obstruct foreign scrutiny of these cases. Such cases also provided an opportunity to test poisonous substances on live subjects. According to Major Peter Deriabin, who defected in 1954, testing on human subjects in the Stalinist period was the norm, and staff in Lab X “performed experiments on living people—prisoners and persons about to be executed—to determine the effectiveness of various poisons and injections as well as the use of hypnotism and drugs in interrogation techniques.”⁴¹

Khrushchev: post-Stalinist maturity

Under Nikita Khrushchev’s leadership, many of Stalin’s domestic excesses were reversed, but political warfare and “active measures”⁴² against émigré communities and “enemies of the people” continued. Previously, active measures had been taken to undermine émigré organizations such as the Russia All Army Union (ROVS)⁴³ and the Trotskyist movement.⁴⁴ However, Khrushchev’s approach to émigré communities was more subtle. Beginning in late 1953, Moscow began a two-pronged campaign. In one strand, “the most active émigré leaders and defectors were sentenced to death [along with] other prominent anti-Communists [who] were to be kidnapped.”⁴⁵ Once repatriated, any kidnapped individuals were either executed or used in domestic propaganda—for example, by falsely stating that they had returned voluntarily from the West. In the second strand, exiled émigrés were to be intimidated into cooperating with Soviet intelligence or, at least, sufficiently “intimidated into refraining from engaging in anti-Communist activities.”⁴⁶

The shift was notable, as observed by a 1964 CIA report:

Since World War II, and especially in the years since Stalin's death, assassination attempts abroad have become increasingly rare. … The Soviets now apparently resort to murder only in the case of persons considered especially dangerous to the regime and who, for one reason or another, cannot be kidnaped.⁴⁷

One exception to this was Khrushchev’s campaign against the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which formed the main opposition to the Sovietization of the republic when Khrushchev was first secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party. When it was initially formed in the 1920s, the OUN offered armed resistance to Polish rule, before resisting Ukraine’s incorporation into the Soviet Union. Following World War II, Moscow successfully pacified the republic, and the leadership of the two OUN factions fled abroad. Despite the OUN’s declining influence, Khrushchev appears to have not forgotten it, and, after gaining power in 1953, he ordered the assassinations of OUN faction leaders Lev Rebet (killed 1957) and Stephan Bandera (killed 1959). In these operations, the KGB used sodium cyanide fired from a specialized gun. This technique left no marks on either victim and represented a considerable advance on Stalinist-era technologies, which relied on either tainted food or poisoned injections. Both men were killed, and there were no suspicions of foul play by the German authorities at the time.⁴⁸

Although Khrushchev directed the campaign against OUN, by the 1950s the Soviet Union had adopted collective leadership. By the 1960s, decisions were made by leadership consensus, including decisions to kill individuals deemed to be problematic, which were made within a formal legal process. As noted by Vladimir Semichastny, chairman of the KGB from 1961 to 1967,

I myself, as chairman of the KGB, never had the right to make unilateral decisions on the physical liquidation of people. … [The decision to execute people] was based above all on the principle of carrying out Soviet laws outside the motherland, which applied above all to defectors from our ranks whose names were known. If a Chekist [KGB man], a Soviet citizen, or a soldier who had sworn to serve the motherland and existing order betrayed his country and fled to the West, then, according to current Soviet Law, he could be taken to court and tried despite his absence. And if he was sentenced to death in those proceedings, after that the question could be raised of carrying out the sentence.⁴⁹

Under Khrushchev, only five instances of credibly reported poisonings were recorded. Two of these were against the OUN, although efforts to silence external critics also continued, including the failed 1954 attempt to kill anti-Soviet activist Georgii Okolovich. The plan to kill Okolovich failed after Nikolai Khokhlov, the agent tasked with the assassination, defected to the West in 1954.⁵⁰ Khokhlov later revealed that Okolovich was to be killed with a special pistol, shaped like a cigarette case. The device fired silently and used poison bullets to kill.⁵¹ As noted by Semichastny, traitors could be sentenced to death in absentia. Indeed, after defecting, Khokhlov was poisoned with thallium in 1957.⁵²

Khokhlov survived, but the attempt on his life was not isolated. In addition to other “active measures,” between 1925 and 1981 there were six instances of poison being used against defectors, the last being the 1981 poisoning of Boris Korczak.⁵³ Deadly poisons and soft chemicals also played a role in efforts to prevent defections, with individuals such as Naum Samet, who was poisoned before his intended defection,⁵⁴ or Oleg Gordievsky, who was interrogated with “truth serum” prior to his defection.⁵⁵

Brezhnev: further restraint

On October 14, 1964 Leonid Brezhnev replaced Khrushchev as leader of the Soviet Union. Soon afterward, Brezhnev also oversaw a change in the leadership of the KGB. Together, these developments resulted in a more conservative foreign policy, including in special tasks and active measures. Contributing to this change was the shock caused by the defection of Bogdan Stashinsky—the man who killed Rebet and Bandera. Despite being well rewarded for killing the OUN leaders, Stashinsky was unhappy in the Soviet Union, and in 1961 he defected to West Germany. There he was put on trial for the two murders, where the sensational revelation of Soviet operations was highly embarrassing to Moscow. This led to the dismissal of KGB chief Alexander Shelepin (who approved Stashinsky’s operation) and his replacement by Yuri Andropov in 1967. As noted by the historian Serhii Plokhy, this was perhaps not because “the Politburo saw anything wrong with the KGB chief overseeing assassinations abroad, but because Leonid Brezhnev took advantage … to finish off his main political opponent.”⁵⁶ Although only a small chapter in the Cold War, this would have a large impact on foreign assassinations because, as Shelepin’s successor, the ambitious Andropov “learned an important lesson from the Shelepin/Stashinsky affair: if he was caught assassinating people abroad his prospects of rising to the top of the USSR would vanish.”⁵⁷ This is supported by the available data, which suggest that the use of poison was further restricted to strategic geopolitical threats (such as against disruptive leaders within the Soviet sphere), very high-profile cultural figures (such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, poisoned in 1971),⁵⁸ and defectors (including exposed CIA asset Boris Korczak, poisoned in 1981).⁵⁹

In many respects, Brezhnev’s foreign policy was more conservative than Khrushchev’s. In his relations with the United States and Europe, Brezhnev sought greater stability through maintenance of the status quo. Though he was less confrontational in his foreign policy than his predecessor, available data suggest that Brezhnev oversaw the poisoning of several national leaders within the Soviet sphere to prevent shifts in their countries’ domestic or foreign policy. The use of poison against disruptive foreign leaders was not unique to Brezhnev; precedents had been established under Stalin. For example, in 1947, Bulgarian leader Georgi Dimitrov and Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito signed the Bled Accord contemplating the creation of a Federation of the Southern Slavs.⁶⁰ Dimitrov died suddenly in 1949 at a Russian health sanatorium after being summoned to Moscow. Officially, Dimitrov died of cirrhosis of the liver, although this was declared before the postmortem and Dimitrov was not an alcoholic.⁶¹ Soon after, Bulgaria reversed its policies and sided with the Soviet Union in the Stalin–Tito split. Similarly, Stalin considered numerous means to remove Tito, although plans to release poisonous chemicals into a room were dismissed as unworkable.⁶²

During Brezhnev’s premiership, reformist Czechoslovak leader Alexander Dubček also sought greater autonomy from Moscow, which led to the Prague Spring in 1968. The Prague Spring was eventually crushed by Warsaw Pact troops under the “Brezhnev Doctrine,” which proclaimed that any threats to socialist rule of Soviet-bloc countries (whether external or internal) were a collective threat, and thus justified the intervention of “fraternal” fellow socialist states. After Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia in August 1968, Dubček and other Czechoslovak leaders were “kidnaped, beaten and spirited away to the Soviet Union,”⁶³ although they were released after a brief, but humiliating, confinement in Moscow. Following his release, Dubček fell ill in Bratislava.⁶⁴ Analysis of his symptoms, which included “widespread pain, nausea, diminished ability to concentrate, uncoordinated thinking, [and] irrationality,”⁶⁵ prompted speculation of radiation sickness, induced by eating strontium-tainted soup during his stay in Moscow.⁶⁶ However, this was never confirmed and, after being replaced by Gustáv Husák in 1969, Dubček survived until 1992. Other cases of national leaders in which poison was considered include Afghan President Hafizullah Amin and Georgian President Zviad Gamsakhurdia.⁶⁷ Amin was not a revisionist leader but had fallen out of favor with Moscow after killing Nur Muhammad Taraki, his mentor and the first socialist leader of Afghanistan. Following the establishment of socialist rule in Afghanistan through the April 1978 Saur Revolution, Taraki and Amin sought to subdue widespread civil unrest with arbitrary arrests and executions that took place “on a massive scale.”⁶⁸ Following a power struggle that resulted in Taraki’s death, Amin continued to put down domestic unrest with acute mismanagement and “disastrous brutality” that created “a challenge that the Soviets could hardly leave unanswered.”⁶⁹ In December 1979, Amin was deposed in a Soviet-led coup, but only after several abortive attempts to poison him and remove him discreetly.⁷⁰

Similarly, after perestroika accelerated the decline of Moscow’s influence in the Soviet republics, Gamsakhurdia came to prominence as a democratic reformer in Georgia. Gamsakhurdia campaigned for independence from the Soviet Union and, according to Ken Alibek, the former deputy director of Biopreparat, the KGB also considered poisoning him. However, Alibek describes his conversation with “Valery Butuzov,” the cover name of a colonel in the KGB’s First Directorate, as a speculative inquiry on the suitability of certain poisons. It is unclear if this idea was seriously considered by the KGB at the time.⁷¹

By the late Soviet period, the use of poison had practically ceased, Andropov’s moratorium on foreign assassinations lasting until the end of the Yeltsin era. However, these restrictions did not prevent the provision of material support to allied states who also faced foreign-based dissidents. For example, in the late 1970s, the KGB provided advanced technology to Bulgaria in the form of pellet guns capable of firing ricin-coated micro-pellets. The encapsulation of toxins in these pellets represented a considerable advance over Stashinsky’s poison-gas gun or Khokhlov’s poisoned bullets concealed in a cigarette case. Bulgaria appears to have attacked three dissidents with these weapons—the most famous of whom was Georgi Markov, who was killed in 1978.⁷² Although poisonings had declined considerably by the late Soviet period, the use of poison here underscores the importance Moscow placed on retaining its influence in its near abroad and Soviet officials’ perception of poison as a tool to unobtrusively remove problematic individuals.

Putin: poisons resurgent?

The decline of poison use continued into the Yeltsin years. However, since the beginning of Putin’s tenure in 1999, poison has re-emerged as a tool of Russian statecraft. Available data suggest that the number of credibly reported and confirmed poisonings under Putin now exceeds the combined tallies of all Soviet leaders. From the available data, 64 poison events have been recorded while Putin has been president, with a further three during Dmitry Medvedev’s presidency (2008–12), when Putin served as prime minister. These 67 events in less than a quarter century are comparable to the 66 events across the Soviet period’s 70 years and represent a massive growth from the abeyance of the late Soviet and Yeltsin years. One factor influencing this may be the relative availability of Russian-related news via the internet in the post-Soviet space.

Nonetheless, available data suggest that the largest use of poison under Putin has been for the protection of regime interests. This echoes Stalinist practice, although bureaucratic intrigue appears to have largely given way to protection of financial interests and power that have resulted from the merging of elite and business interests in post-Soviet Russia and the subsequent emergence of Russian kleptocracy. This has led to a greater diversity of victims, but one common factor is that, in some way, these people have threatened the personal or financial interests of Russia’s new elite. Navalny’s multiple poisonings are the most prominent illustration of this trend, although other credibly reported examples include anti-corruption campaigners such as Yuri Shchekochikhin (2003). Shchekochikhin was an investigative journalist and lawmaker who investigated the “Three Whales” money-laundering scandal in Russia, in which the Three Whales furniture import company was used by high-level officials for laundering money and dealing contraband.⁷³ According to doctors who treated him, Shchekochikhin may have suffered “an acute allergic reaction”⁷⁴ to an unknown substance, although friends described how the poison had transformed the body of the fit 53-year-old into the corpse of an old man.⁷⁵ Investigative journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan recall the chilling effects on the wider press of Shchekochikhin’s poisoning:

We were young journalists, but we knew that many of our colleagues were gunned down, stabbed, or blown up as retaliation for their reporting. None, however, had ever been poisoned before. It was a gruesome escalation … a way of telegraphing to critics of the wealthy and powerful that no longer would they just be murdered. Now they’d die horrible, agonizing deaths that would torment their friends and families.⁷⁶

The campaign against civil society would continue. Another victim was Yuri Gladkov (2007), co-author of the 1992 St. Petersburg Assembly’s food-commission report that investigated the embezzlement of food orders, in which Putin is believed to have been complicit.⁷⁷ Yet another was Vladimir Kara-Murza (poisoned in 2015 and 2017), an opposition journalist and civil-society activist. After he collapsed in Moscow in 2015, his wife sent medical samples to an independent French toxicology laboratory, which “found traces of heavy metals, dozens of times over the normal limit.” According to Kara-Murza, this “proved that something abnormal was done, but they never found the exact toxin.”⁷⁸ Other deaths strongly suspected of being poisonings include those of individuals involved in Russian finance, such as Stephen Moss (2003)⁷⁹ and Badri Patarkatsyshvili (2008).⁸⁰

The merging of elite and business interests in post-Soviet Russia has resulted in the expansion and diversification of perceived threats to the country’s new elites. However, under Putin’s leadership there also appears to be a greater diversity of actors engaged in poisonings, both inside and outside traditional intelligence services. Whereas the use of poison was previously confined to the KGB/FSB, now it appears the GRU has sought its own capability, as have elements of the private sector outside of direct state control. As noted above, in October 2018 Novaya Gazeta claimed that an unspecified part of Prigozhin’s “business structure” had experimented with poison after recruiting former pharmaceutical student Oleg Simonov. Novaya Gazeta’s source was unable to describe the chemicals used but was able to describe “the method of application and described in detail the injection device—apparently, a veterinary syringe dart was used.”⁸¹ According to the newspaper, at least two individuals were targeted with poisons in 2016: Sergey Tikhonov, an “opposition-minded” blogger, and Sergey Mokhov, an anthropologist and husband of Lyubov Sobol—an opposition politician and lawyer for Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. According to Novaya Gazeta, Mokhov’s poisoning was intended to scare Sobol away from her anti-corruption activities. These would not be the last times poison appeared to be connected to Prigozhin. For example, in 2018, Russian activist Pyotr Verzilov was poisoned. Verzilov has been associated with the Russian feminist punk-rock group Pussy Riot and its high-profile civil-disobedience campaigns. However, it is more likely that Verzilov was targeted for his investigations into the role of Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group in the Central African Republic.⁸² Following the death of three Russian journalists with whom he was investigating the Central African Republic story, Verzilov began to investigate their deaths too and “expected to receive some documents pertaining to [that] investigation the day that he fell ill.”⁸³

Russia continues to have many outspoken critics of the Kremlin, although, since Putin came to power, organizing a coherent opposition movement in Russia has become increasingly difficult. This is significant because lawmakers have the power to hold official hearings and conduct official investigations. In today’s authoritarian landscape, Putin’s United Russia Party is highly unlikely to be dislodged, although Navalny’s strategy of supporting individual opposition candidates posed a particular nuisance. This is because Navalny backed candidates who ran on anti-corruption platforms. These candidates, as lawmakers, would be more inclined to authorize official investigations into corrupt practices or otherwise make life uncomfortable for corrupt elites and officials. There have been two attempts to kill Navalny with deadly poisons (2019 and 2020),⁸⁴ but soft chemicals also appear to have been used to remove Putin’s political competitors. For example, in February 2004, presidential candidate Ivan Rybkin claimed he was kidnapped by Russian security services. He later dropped out of the presidential race, claiming he had been drugged and placed in compromising situations.⁸⁵

The next-largest category of poisonings recorded under Putin has consisted of “unintentional” victims, a group that had previously formed only small parts of overall totals. The reason for this shift is unclear. One factor may be that, during the Cold War, poison was the preserve of the KGB, which built up considerable expertise in developing different poisons and their associated delivery devices. However, in the aftermath of the apparent bungling by the FSB (the KGB’s successor) of Litvinenko’s poisoning—which enabled subsequent British and German police investigations to identify FSB operatives—it appears that tasking for foreign assassinations was passed from the FSB to the GRU. Prior to 2015, no poison-related events were attributed to the GRU, and, since Litvinenko’s poisoning, the GRU has been the only identified user of poison outside Russia’s borders. Instances of GRU poisonings include the attacks on Emilian Gebrev⁸⁶ and Sergei Skripal, both of which involved highly toxic chemicals.⁸⁷ In an apparent decline in tradecraft, Novichok agents have seen cruder use, either by being smeared on things the GRU hopes victims will touch (such as the front-door handle of Skripal’s house, or the handle of Gebrev’s car door) or by being poorly discarded (such as in an industrial trash receptacle in the British town of Amesbury), thus poisoning many people other than the intended targets.

Consistent with previous trends, defectors have formed the third-largest group of poisoned individuals under Putin. This continues the Soviet practice of executing individuals they deemed traitors, who were condemned to death in absentia. In 1996, Russia’s Criminal Code was revised, and treason was no longer considered a capital offense. Under Putin, however, a Soviet ethos has revived and at least four defectors have been poisoned since 2000—namely, Boris Volodarsky (2006),⁸⁸ Alexander Litvinenko (twice in 2006),⁸⁹ Oleg Gordievsky (2007),⁹⁰ and Sergei Skripal (2018).

The fourth-largest category includes foreign leaders in Russia’s perceived sphere of influence. This too is an apparent continuation of a Soviet practice as Russia continues to seek greater influence in its near abroad through a combination of economic, political, and military means. Previously, however, intended targets were incumbent leaders who threatened the status quo. Now intended targets appear to include domestic opposition leaders who have yet to be elected but are deemed to be potentially disruptive. By removing these perceived threats, Russia seeks to ensure that friendly leaders remain in power and to consolidate its influence in its near abroad.

Perhaps the most infamous poisoning in the post-Soviet space is the 2004 use of dioxin against Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, who sought to reorient Ukraine more toward Europe.⁹¹ However, there may be other cases. For example, in April 2019, Abkhazian opposition leader Aslan Bzhaniya fell seriously ill in Sokhumi, Abkhazia. Although Abkhazia is internationally recognized as being part of Georgia, since 2008 the territory has been recognized by Moscow as a sovereign state. After falling ill, Bzhaniya was later hospitalized in Moscow before being transported to Germany, where his illness was linked to heavy-metal poisoning—in particular, from mercury and cadmium.⁹² Bzhaniya was initially diagnosed with pneumonia, but two of his bodyguards subsequently also became ill, raising suspicions that they all had been poisoned.⁹³ Bzhaniya again fell seriously ill in March 2020, less than three weeks before a snap presidential election, prompting speculation of a second poisoning attempt.⁹⁴ Bzhaniya’s position as opposition leader was particularly sensitive because he was the joint candidate of a coalition of opposition political parties and movements, thereby representing one of the few serious challenges to the Moscow-backed incumbent, Raul Khajimba.⁹⁵

Lastly, Putin has overseen the poisoning of members of armed opposition groups, although this has the fewest recorded events—likely because such groups can be attacked through conventional military means. According to the available data, only four incidents involved the reported use of poison against armed opposition leaders, and only two reports—those dealing with Samir Ibn-Salib Ibn-Abdallah al-Suwylim (Amir Khattab) and Lecha Ismailov—were regarded as credible. Claims that Yassir al-Sudani (Yasser Youssef Amarat or Abu Yassir) were poisoned were assessed by the author’s methodology to lack credible reporting and were excluded from the dataset. Amir Khattab led the Chechen Mujahideen, which comprised foreign volunteers who fought in Chechnya and elsewhere in the North Caucasus. In this case, poison appears to have been chosen due to operational difficulties in tracking Khattab directly, a poisoned letter being used to overcome this.⁹⁶

Lecha “the Beard” Ismailov was a Chechen gangster and field commander. After being captured by Russian forces in the siege of Grozny in 2000, he was sentenced to nine years in prison. Like Isaiah Oggins and Raoul Wallenberg, Ismailov died in jail and under suspicious circumstances with symptoms “including hair loss and massive blisters … said to be inexplicable to the doctors … trying to treat him.”⁹⁷ After Litvinenko’s death and the widespread reporting of polonium poisoning, Islamov’s symptoms were re-examined, leading to speculation that he was poisoned in a trial run of the use of polonium against Litvinenko. However, Russian officials maintain that Ismailov died in 2004 from heart and kidney disease compounded by complications of a “severe skin allergy.”⁹⁸ Reports that Yassir al-Sudani died after eating poisoned supplies⁹⁹ trace back to an unverified blog,¹⁰⁰ and contrast with official reports that he died in a conventional military attack by Russian forces.¹⁰¹

Institutional agency and chemical agents

To understand intent, it is also necessary to understand decision-making processes because, although rising numbers of poisonings appear linked to Putin’s own interests, they may also be feasibly linked to institutional (and now private-sector) interests, where considerable operational autonomy limits effective oversight. In a marked contrast to Moscow’s previous moratoriums on state-directed assassinations, in 2003 Russian authorities formally permitted the elimination of “enemies of the state” and ordered the creation, by May 1, 2004, of special units to conduct such operations in Western Europe.¹⁰² In July 2006, Russia introduced the legal framework for this, in the form of new legislation permitting the killing of “extremists” abroad.¹⁰³ Ostensibly justified by the need to pursue al-Qaeda after the murder of four Russian embassy employees in Iraq, the law has far-reaching implications. It expands the definition of “extremists” from those “seeking to overthrow the Russian government” to “those causing mass disturbances, committing hooliganism or acts of vandalism” and “those slandering the individual occupying the post of president of the Russian Federation.”¹⁰⁴

These changes effectively reverse the Yeltsin-era ban on the death penalty and legalize extrajudicial killings. This replicates the Soviet practice of issuing death sentences in absentia but employs much broader criteria. It also differs from the later Soviet system of collective decision making because the power to oversee such operations is formally vested in the president alone, who can make such decisions without consultation.¹⁰⁵ However, authority can also be delegated, and the extent to which this power may be used is therefore unclear. For example, according to Natasha Kuhrt, a Russia specialist at King’s College London, the 2006 legislative changes allow a degree of delegation that lacks full executive scrutiny, since “[f]ull discretion would be given to the head of any counter-terrorism operation.”¹⁰⁶ British intelligence analyst Glenmore Trenear-Harvey goes further, suggesting that security services may be emboldened to conduct targeted killings on implicit orders alone, under the assumption that “they are doing what Putin wanted.”¹⁰⁷ Such assessments are supported by historian Mark Galeotti, who observed a continuation of “what we’ve seen in the past: people being killed by ‘not the Kremlin,’ but by people who were sure that they could have retrospectively the Kremlin’s approval or at least acceptance.”¹⁰⁸

Certainly the FSB has considerable autonomy and, in seeming contrast to the long operational lead times that characterize special tasks,¹⁰⁹ opportunistic poisonings have also taken place. For example, Volodarsky argues that the 2004 poisoning of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya with a “soft chemical” was to prevent her from interfering in negotiations in Beslan, where Chechen militants had taken a school hostage.¹¹⁰ Perhaps exploiting this autonomy, it also appears that the FSB has used poison for more parochial interests without executive oversight. For example, in April 1997, Vladimir Tskai was allegedly poisoned by the FSB. Tskai is one of the few reported cases of poisoning during Yeltsin’s tenure. Officially, Tskai died from cirrhosis of the liver although he “neither drank nor smoked and was in good health.”¹¹¹ Prior to his death, Alexander Litvinenko asserted that the FSB killed Tskai because he had been deputy head of the Moscow Criminal Investigative Department, and the FSB could not forgive him for dismantling the Lazovsky Gang, which it had recruited and controlled.¹¹²

The increasing diversity of actors in Russia that use poison, and the possibility that unauthorized attacks could be conducted by rogue elements within the state’s security apparatus, complicates external understanding of Russian decision-making processes. This is particularly problematic for analysts seeking to understand whether poisonings are the result of direct orders, delegated authority, or tacitly approved self-initiative. The notion that assassinations may also be instigated by an oligarch but carried out on their behalf by state authorities further complicates such understanding. Nonetheless, though it may be impossible to establish whether Putin is directly culpable for ordering individual murders, as president he remains responsible for the system over which he presides, including the state’s intelligence apparatus. Moreover, although Russia’s intelligence services have considerable autonomy, particularly in domestic settings, there are firm limits to that autonomy. For example, it is highly unlikely that foreign assassinations would be undertaken without presidential approval, or entrusted to third parties, because of the potential political ramifications of killing dissidents abroad, especially in the West. In addition, access to sophisticated poison products remains highly restricted, while the FSB’s organizational culture of “covering one’s back”¹¹³ further limits the willingness to kill people abroad without permission. Based on such factors, in January 2016, Sir Robert Owen—who conducted the United Kingdom’s inquiry into Litvinenko’s death—concluded that the available evidence indicated that the FSB operation to kill Litvinenko “was probably approved by [FSB Director Nikolai] Patrushev and also by President Putin.”¹¹⁴ Similarly, in imposing sanctions in response to the attempted assassination of Navalny, the European Council stated that “it is reasonable to conclude that the poisoning of Alexei Navalny was only possible with the consent of the Presidential Executive Office.”¹¹⁵ Although it may not be possible to trace explicit approval of operations back to the president, the available circumstantial evidence suggests that widespread use of poison, especially abroad, without presidential authorization is highly unlikely.

Assuming that Moscow has approved an increasing number of poisonings, there appear to be two contradictory strands in its decision making. On the one hand, poison is useful because it is a discreet tool for killing problematic individuals. On the other hand, since Litvinenko’s 2006 poisoning, accusations of poisonings have attracted increased levels of attention that aids Moscow’s “dark power,” which Galeotti defines as the “shadowy counterpart to ‘soft power.’”¹¹⁶ The fear that poisoning evokes may be seen as a secondary benefit, since poison appears to strike a particularly fearful chord in the émigré community. According to Soldatov and Borogan, “[I]t struck us that almost everyone we met—an oligarch in exile, an oligarch tamed by the Kremlin, a high-ranking priest of the Russian Orthodox Church—mentioned Novichok.”¹¹⁷ Indeed, after the attempted murder of Skripal, “They’d all evidently come to the conclusion that, from now on, they couldn’t rule out being killed with it.”¹¹⁸

Conclusion

This article has explored how the Soviet state used poison and how that use has changed in post-Soviet Russia. It shows that, in general, Soviet leaders reserved poison for individuals who were seen as particularly dangerous—namely, prominent critics of the Soviet system, disruptive leaders within the Soviet sphere, and defectors. As the Soviet system matured, dissidents were increasingly accommodated, and, by the late Soviet period, instances of poisons were increasingly rare.

The exception to this overall pattern is under Stalin’s rule, when poison was used mainly to protect regime, rather than national, interests. The use of poison to protect regime interests has renewed in post-Soviet Russia, where, since the 2000s, it has again become part of Russian statecraft. Domestically, increased use to protect regime interests has been driven by the growth of Russian kleptocracy and the attendant fears of the Russian elite that its corruption will be exposed. Financial concerns, rather than challenges to personal authority or ambitions, are now the main motivation.

Poison use within the Soviet Union was decided by a combination of political direction and operational requirements, and it was subject (eventually) to strict oversight by the Politburo. The FSB has retained its poison capability, although new capabilities demonstrated by the GRU and Prigozhin’s business interests, and the possibility that some poisonings may occur without explicit orders, all suggest weakened oversight of how poison is used. Although many recent poisonings cannot be directly attributed to presidential orders, the existence of a permissive environment where only tacit presidential approval is required, or institutes may pursue their own parochial interests, is no less concerning.

Severe diplomatic consequences mean the use of poison abroad without presidential approval is highly unlikely, and the increased use against disruptive leaders in the near abroad and against defectors represents considerable continuity with Soviet practice. However, such use has nevertheless evolved. It now appears that Russia preemptively targets perceived threats to the status quo, and the shift toward more toxic chemicals has led to larger numbers of unintentional casualties.

Although poisonings are likely intended to be overlooked and do avoid attention, many, in fact, have been discovered and attracted considerable attention. Indeed, recent high-profile poisonings, such as those of Navalny and Skripal, have resulted in numerous retaliatory measures against Moscow, including international sanctions and the wide-scale expulsion of Russian diplomats. Historical precedent suggests that, although responses to Russia’s poison program may lead Moscow to temporarily reduce its activities, especially abroad, these measures do little to address the root causes of poison use and are highly unlikely to prevent further use in the long run. Instead, historical behavior suggests that Moscow will seek to maintain its extensive capabilities and that poison will continue to be considered a tool to discreetly address domestic challenges, strategically important issues, and the actions of perceived traitors. Historical analysis also shows that much depends on the attitudes of individual Russian leaders. Changes in these attitudes are unlikely to be forthcoming as long as Russian leaders continue to benefit from, and thus tolerate, the entrenched corruption through which the Russian elites seek to maintain their wealth and influence by all available means.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Geoffrey Chapman, Toby Ewin, Susan Martin, and Paul Schulte, along with the two anonymous reviews, for their review of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Karl Dewey

Karl Dewey is a research associate at the Centre for Science and Security Studies, which is based in the School of Security Studies at King’s College London. He has MAs in terrorism studies and nonproliferation studies from King’s College London.

Notes

1 BBC News, “Alexei Navalny: Russia Opposition Leader Poisoned with Novichok—Germany,” September 2, 2020, <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54002880>.

2 Amy Knight, Putin's Killers: The Kremlin and the Art of Political Assassination (London: Biteback, 2019), pp. 11–29.

3 Serhii Plokhy, The Man with the Poison Gun: A Cold War Spy Story (New York: Perseus Books, 2016).

4 Gregory D. Koblentz, “Regime Security: A New Theory for Understanding the Proliferation of Chemical and Biological Weapons,” Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 34, No. 3 (2013), <https://doi.org/10.1080/13523260.2013.842298>.

5 Miriam Lanskoy and Dylan Myles-Primakoff, “The Rise of Kleptocracy: Power and Plunder in Putin’s Russia,” Journal of Democracy, Vol. 29, No. 1 (2018), pp. 76–85.

6 For a discussion, see Luke Harding, Mafia State: How One Reporter Became an Enemy of the Brutal New Russia (New York: Random House, 2011).

7 Vadim J. Birstein, The Perversion of Knowledge: The True Story of Soviet Science (Cambridge, MA: Westview Press, 2001). According to Volodarsky, the term “Kamera” has “a sinister meaning … associated with a prison cell or torture chamber.” See Boris Volodarsky, The KGB's Poison Factory: From Lenin to Litvinenko (Barnsley, UK: Frontline Books, 2017), p. 34.

8 Soviet intelligence underwent numerous changes in name and scope. According to Global Security, various formations include the Cheka or VChK (1917–22), GPU (1922–23), OGPU (1923-34), NKVD (1934–41, 1941–43), NKGB (1941, 1943–46), MGB (1946–47, 1952–53), KI (1947–52), MVD (1953–54), and KGB (1954–91). After 1991, the KGB was reorganized into the FSB. See Global Security, “The Foreign Intelligence Role of the Committee for State Security,” n.d., <https://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/world/russia/kgb-su0521.htm>.

9 Volodarsky, The KGB’s Poison Factory, p. 33.

10 Volodarsky, p. 41.

11 Chemical Weapons Convention, January 13, 1993, Article II.

12 Volodarsky, The KGB’s Poison Factory, p. 42.

13 Shlomo Shpiro, “Poisoned Chalice: Intelligence Use of Chemical and Biological Weapons,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2009), pp. 1–30.

14 For example, see Volodarsky, The KGB’s Poison Factory, pp. 132–33 for details on the operation to kidnap Nicholas Shadrin from Vienna in December 1957. Shadrin died of asphyxiation while being smuggled back to the Soviet Union after being incorrectly sedated.

15 For a detailed breakdown of the changing reporting structures and personalities, see Birstein, The Perversion of Knowledge, p. 98.

16 Volodarsky, The KGB’s Poison Factory, p. 34.

17 Russia’s original CW program was prompted by the German use of such weapons in World War I (1914–18), during which the Imperial Russian Army began CW research at its Central Scientific-Technical Laboratory. The Bolsheviks captured these supplies and, between 1918 and 1924, also managed a small CW program under the Artillery Directorate (under the Revolutionary Military Council). In 1924, the Soviet Red Army began a systematic reform, founding the Military-Chemical Defence Committee (VOKhIMU) in 1925. According to Ian Johnson, “This agency would become responsible for the bulk of the Soviet chemical weapons program,” as well as the biological-weapons program (until Biopreparat). It would also be involved in the Soviet nuclear program. See Ian Johnson, “Prophet of Poison Gas: Yakov Fishman and the Soviet Chemical Weapons Program, 1924–1937,” Vulcan, Vol. 6, No. 1 (2018), pp. 16–36, <https://doi.org/10.1163/22134603-00601002>.

18 See Sudoplatov’s account in Nikita Petrov, Psy Stalina [Stalin’s Dogs] (Warsaw: Demart, 2012). All translations in this article are by the author.

19 Here the laboratory was officially closed but, in reality, moved. Volodarsky calls this technique “double compartmenting,” that is, “spoofing the original group who held the information into believing the operation has ended, while it was simply moved to a new compartment.” Volodarsky, The KGB’s Poison Factory, p. 35.

20 Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1990).

21 US Department of the Treasury, “Treasury Sanctions Russian Operatives and Entities Linked to the Poisoning of Aleksey Navalny, Chemical Weapons Program,” August 20, 2021, <https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0328>.

22 US Department of the Treasury, “Issuance of Executive Order Blocking Property with Respect to Certain Russian Energy Export Pipelines; Issuance of Russia-Related General License and Related Frequently Asked Questions; PEESA Designations; Non-Proliferation Designations Updates,” August 20, 2021, <https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/recent-actions/20210820>.

23 GOSNIIOKHT, “Ob institute” [About the Institute], n.d., <https://gosniiokht.ru/content/about>.

24 Bellingcat, “Russia’s Clandestine Chemical Weapons Programme and the GRU’s Unit 29155,” October 23, 2020, <https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2020/10/23/russias-clandestine-chemical-weapons-programme-and-the-grus-unit-21955/>.

25 Bellingcat, “Russia's Clandestine Chemical Weapons Programme.”

26 Bellingcat.

27 Jennifer Rankin, “Skripal Poisoning Suspects Put on European Sanctions List,” The Guardian, January 21, 2019, <https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jan/21/skripal-poisoning-suspects-european-sanctions-list>.

28 Denis Korotkov, “Povar lyubit poostreye” [The Cook Likes It Hotter], Novaya Gazeta, November 16, 2018, <https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2018/10/22/78289-povar-lyubit-poostree>.

29 Rossen Bossev, Nickolay Stoyanov, and Martin Dimitrov, “Novichok Shock: Did Moscow Test Lethal Substance in Sofia before Salisbury?” Kapital Insights, March 15, 2019, <https://kinsights.capital.bg/politics_and_society/2019/03/09/4147643_novichok_shock/>.

30 Knight, Putin's Killers, p. 6.

31 For a study of Russian attitudes, see Julie Fedor, “The Figure of the Traitor in the Chekist Cosmology,” in Liam Francis Gearon, ed., Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2020).

32 Arkadi Vaksberg, The Murder of Maxim Gorky: A Secret Execution (New York: Enigma Books, 2007).

33 Pavel Sudoplatov, Anatoli Sudoplatov, Jerrold L. Schecter, and Ledna P. Schecter, Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness—a Soviet Spymaster (New York: Little, Brown, 1995).

34 Ilya Zbarsky, The Check-Point Number One (Moscow: Vagrius, 1999), quoted in Valery N. Soyfer, “The Consequences of Political Dictatorship for Russian Science,” Nature Reviews Genetics, Vol. 2, pp. 723–29.

35 Arkadi Vaksberg, Toxic Politics: The Secret History of the Kremlin's Poison's Laboratory—from the Special Cabinet to the Death of Litvinenko (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011), p. 75.

36 Birstein, The Perversion of Knowledge; Vaksberg, Toxic Politics.

37 Vaksberg, The Murder of Maxim Gorky.

38 Stephen D. Shenfield, “The Stalin–Beria Terror in Abkhazia, 1936–1953,” Abkhaz World, June 30, 2010, <https://abkhazworld.com/aw/history/499-stalin-beria-terror-in-abkhazia-1936-53-by-stephen-shenfield>.

39 Sudoplatov et al., Special Tasks.

40 The details surrounding the death of Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat stationed in Hungary, remain unclear. Sudoplatov hypothesizes that he was kidnapped in Budapest as part of a failed recruitment operation, kept in captivity, and then poisoned after refusing to cooperate. This remains debated.

41 Cited in Volodarsky, The KGB’s Poison Factory, p. 35.

42 When conducting political warfare, the Soviet Union, unlike the West, did not differentiate between overt and covert affairs. It used “active measures” as a term “to describe overt and covert techniques for influencing events and behaviour in, and the actions of, foreign societies.” Roy Godson and Richard Shultz, “Soviet Active Measures: Distinctions and Definitions,” Defense Analysis, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1985), pp. 101–10.

43 General Baron Pytor Wrangel was poisoned, and sedatives were used in numerous other kidnapping attempts.

44 Reported Trotskyist victims of poisonings include Ignatz Reiss, Lev Sedov, and Wolfgang Zalus.

45 Ronald Seth, The Executioners: The Story of SMERSH (London: Cassell, 1967), p. 135.

46 Seth, The Executioners, p. 135.

47 “Soviet Use of Assassination and Kidnapping: A 1964 view of KGB methods,” Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 19, No. 3 (1964) <https://www.cia.gov/static/cdf1ae53dae899a8b8f27e827e6ac22c/Soviet-Use-of-Assassination.pdf>.

48 Plokhy, The Man with the Poison Gun.

49 Typescript of Vladimir Semichastny memoirs, in Tomas Sniegon’s archive, cited in Plokhy, The Man with the Poison Gun, pp. 303–4.

50 Seth, The Executioners, pp. 126–31

51 Seth, pp. 130–31.

52 Plokhy, The Man with the Poison Gun.

53 Boris Korczak, interview by Joel Spivak, The Joel Spivak Show, WRC Radio, October 12, 1981, <https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP90-00965R000100150034-1.pdf>.

54 Nikita Petrov, “Shtatnyy Gosudarstvennyy Ubiytsa (Reabilitirovannyy): Dva dnya iz zhizni Pavla Sudoplatova” [Staff Assassin (Rehabilitated): Two Days in the Life of Pavel Sudoplatov], Novaya Gazeta, August 6, 2013, <https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2013/08/07/55829-shtatnyy-gosudarstvennyy-ubiytsa-reabilitirovannyy>.

55 Sudoplatov et al., Special Tasks.

56 Plokhy, The Man with the Poison Gun, p. 302.

57 Plokhy, p. 302.

58 David Remnick, “KGB Plot to Assassinate Solzhenitsyn Reported,” Washington Post, April 21, 1992, <https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1992/04/21/kgb-plot-to-assassinate-solzhenitsyn-reported/aa5de1cd-efa2-4953-ba6a-2a42f93e33b1/>; Volodarsky, The KGB’s Poison Factory, p. 35.

59 Boris Korczak, The Joel Spivak Show.

60 Vaksberg, Toxic Politics.

61 Vaksberg.

62 Sudoplatov et al., Special Tasks.

63 Baltimore Sun, “Dubcek Urges Calm; Reported Ill,” January 9, 1969.

64 Baltimore Sun “Dubcek Urges Calm.”

65 Molecular Biology Working Group, Biomedical Intelligence Subcommittee, US Intelligence Board, “Radiation Sickness or Death Caused by Surreptitious Administration of Ionizing Radiation to an Individual,” Report No. 4, August 27, 1969, <https://web.archive.org/web/20010903231650/http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/Surreptitious-Radiation-Administration.htm>.

66 Molecular Biology Working Group, “Radiation Sickness.”

67 Details of the operation are provided by Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB. See also Rodrick Braithwaite, Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979–89 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

68 Braithwaite, Afgantsy, p. 53.

69 Braithwaite, p. 74.

70 Braithwaite, pp. 94–96.

71 Ken Alibek, Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World—Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It (New York: Delta, 1999), pp. 174–76.

72 In addition to Markov, two other dissidents—Stefan Bankov (failed attempt in 1974) and Vladimir Kostov (failed attempt in 1978)—appear to have been targeted. For details of the Bankov case, see Seth W. Carus, “Bioterrorism and Biocrimes: The Illicit Use of Biological Agents since 1900,” Center for Counterproliferation Research, National Defense University, August 1998 (revised February 2001), <https://irp.fas.org/threat/cbw/carus.pdf>.

73 Victor Yasmann, “Russia: Corruption Scandal Could Shake Kremlin,” Radio Free Europe–Radio Liberty, September 26, 2006, <https://www.rferl.org/a/1071621.html>.

74 Committee to Protect Journalists, “Yuri Shchekochikhin,” n.d. <https://cpj.org/data/people/yuri-shchekochikhin/>.

75 Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, “Drink Me: The Kremlin’s Long, Evil History of Poisoning Its Enemies,” New Lines Magazine, October 4, 2020, <https://newlinesmag.com/essays/drink-me-the-kremlins-long-evil-history-of-poisoning-its-enemies/>.

76 Soldatov and Borogan, “Drink Me.”

77 Volodarsky, The KGB’s Poison Factory.

78 Tom Peck, “Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Twice-Poisoned Russian Dissident, Says: ‘If It Happens a Third Time, That’ll Be It,’” The Independent, March 18, 2017, <https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/russian-dissident-vladimir-kara-murza-poisoned-twice-democracy-campaigner-vladimir-putin-a7637421.html>.

79 Heidi Blake, Tom Warren, Richard Holmes, Jason Leopold, Jane Bradley, and Alex Campbell, “From Russia With Blood: The Kremlin's Ruthless Assassination Program and Vladimir Putin’s Secret War on the West,” Buzzfeed News, June 15, 2017, <https://www.buzzfeed.com/heidiblake/from-russia-with-blood-14-suspected-hits-on-british-soil>.

80 Knight, Putin’s Killers.

81 Korotkov, “Povar lyubit poostreye.”

82 Masha Gessen, “We Now Know More About the Apparent Poisoning of the Pussy Riot Member Pytor Verzilov,” New Yorker, September 19, 2018, <https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/we-now-know-more-about-the-apparent-poisoning-of-the-pussy-riot-member-pyotr-verzilov>.

83 Gessen, “We Now Know More.”

84 Shaun Walker, “Alexei Navalny Discharged from Hospital against Wishes of Doctor,” The Guardian, July 29, 2019, <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/29/russian-opposition-leader-alexei-navalny-may-have-been-poisoned-says-doctor> .

85 Jonathan Steele, “I Was kidnapped, Says Putin Election Rival: Rybkin Claims He Was Drugged during Mystery Absence,” The Guardian, February 13, 2004, <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/feb/14/russia.jonathansteele>.

86 Bellingcat, “The Dreadful Eight: GRU’s Unit 29155 and the 2015 Poisoning of Emilian Gebrev,” November 23, 2019, <https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2019/11/23/the-dreadful-eight-grus-unit-29155-and-the-2015-poisoning-of-emilian-gebrev/>.

87 Bellingcat, “FSB Team of Chemical Weapon Experts Implicated in Alexey Navalny Novichok Poisoning,” December 14, 2020, <https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2020/12/14/fsb-team-of-chemical-weapon-experts-implicated-in-alexey-navalny-novichok-poisoning/>; Bellingcat, “Hunting the Hunters: How We Identified Navalny’s FSB Stalkers,” December 14, 2020, <https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/2020/12/14/navalny-fsb-methodology>.

88 Volodarsky, The KGB’s Poison Factory.

89 Litvinenko Inquiry, “Report into the Death of Alexander Litvinenko,” January 2016, <https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/493860/The-Litvinenko-Inquiry-H-C-695-web.pdf>.

90 Matthew Taylor, “Former KGB Defector Claims He Was Poisoned by Russians,” The Guardian, April 6, 2008, <https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/apr/07/ukcrime.russia>.

91 For details of Yushchenko’s ordeal, see the discussion in Volodarsky, The KGB’s Poison Factory.

92 Giorgi Lomsadze, “Abkhazian Presidential Candidate Claims He Was Poisoned,” Eurasianet, May 21, 2019, <https://eurasianet.org/abkhazian-presidential-candidate-claims-he-was-poisoned>.

93 Lomsadze, “Abkhazian Presidential Candidate.”

94 JAM News, “In Abkhazia, Suspicions of Second Attempt to Poison Opposition Leader May Disrupt Presidential Elections,” May 3, 2020, <https://jam-news.net/in-abkhazia-suspicions-of-second-attempt-to-poison-opposition-leader-may-disrupt-presidential-elections/>.

95 Vasili Rukhadze, “New Pro-Russian, Radical Separatist Leader Takes Power in Breakaway Abkhazia,” Eurasia Daily Monitor, Vol. 3, No. 153 (2014), <https://www.refworld.org/docid/54082e014.html>.

96 John Daniszewski, “Poison Hidden in a Letter May Have Killed Rebel in Chechnya,” Los Angeles Times, May 1, 2002, <https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-may-01-fg-poison1-story.html>.

Hassan Abbas, “Khattab’s Alleged Assassin Reportedly Executed,” The Monitor, Vol. 8, No. 94 (2002), <https://jamestown.org/program/khattabs-alleged-assassin-reportedly-executed/>.

97 Lawrence Uzzell, “Reports Question Death of Chechen Prisoner,” North Caucasus Weekly, Vol. 5, No. 17 (2004), <https://jamestown.org/program/reports-question-death-of-chechen-prisoner-2/>.

98 Interfax News Agency, “Chechen Field Commander Died Natural Death in Prison,” Caucasian Knot, April 23, 2004, <https://www.eng.kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/2819/>.

99 Liz Fuller, “When ‘Runners’ Turn Snitch: FSB Targets North Caucasus Insurgency Support Personnel,” Radio Free Europe–Radio Liberty, May 16, 2011, <https://www.rferl.org/a/runners_snitch_fsb_targets_north_caucasus_insurgency/24176439.html>.

100 Kavkaz Jihad Blogspot, “The Last Words of Yassir-ra,” October 2010, <http://kavkaz-jihad.blogspot.com/2010/10/last-words-of-yassir-ra.html>.

101 Gordon M. Hahn, The Caucasus Emirate Mujahedin: Global Jihadism in Russia's North Caucasus and Beyond (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2014).

102 Duncan Gardham, “Russia ‘Gave Agents Licence to Kill’ Enemies of the State,” The Telegraph, October 2, 2011, <https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/8802732/Leaked-document-reveals-plans-to-eliminate-Russias-enemies-overseas.html>.

103 Alice Cuddy, “What Authority Does Putin Have to Order Extrajudicial Killings Abroad?” Euronews, March 8, 2018, <https://www.euronews.com/2018/03/08/what-authority-does-putin-have-to-order-extrajudicial-killings-abroad->.

104 Steven Eke, “Russia Law on Killing 'Extremists' Abroad,” BBC News, November 27, 2006, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6188658.stm>.

105 Eke, “Russia Law.”

106 Cuddy, “What Authority Does Putin Have.”

107 Cuddy.

108 Mark Galeotti, “The Navalny Hit (After the Bellingcat/Insider Report),” In Moscow’s Shadows, episode 19, December 15, 2020, Buzzsprout, <https://www.buzzsprout.com/1026985/6861718-in-moscow-s-shadows-19-the-navalny-hit-after-the-bellingcat-insider-report>.

109 Seth, The Executioners.

110 Volodarsky, The KGB’s Poison Factory.

111 Vaksberg, Toxic Politics, p. 160.

112 Vaksberg, p. 160.

113 The quote is from Yuri Shvets, a former Soviet intelligence officer and witness to the Litvinenko Inquiry. Litvinenko Inquiry, “Report into the Death of Alexander Litvinenko,” p. 241.

114 Litvinenko Inquiry.

115 European Council, “Council Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/1480 of 14 October 2020 implementing Regulation (EU) 2018/1542 Concerning Restrictive Measures against the Proliferation and Use of Chemical Weapons,” Official Journal of the European Union, Vol. 63 (October 15, 2020), <https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=OJ:L:2020:341:FULL&from=EN>.

116 Mark Galeotti, “Russia Pursues ‘Dark Power’ and the West Has No Answer,” Raam op Rusland, March 15, 2018, <https://raamoprusland.nl/dossiers/kremlin/894-russia-pursues-dark-power-in-the-skripal-case>.

117 Soldatov and Borogan, “Drink Me.”

118 Soldatov and Borogan.