Novichok Agent - Description of Novichok Agents

Description of Novichok Agents

The first description of these agents was provided by Mirzayanov. Dispersed in an ultra-fine powder instead of a gas or a vapor, they have unique qualities. A binary agent was then created that would mimic the same properties but would either be manufactured using materials legal under the CWT or be undetectable by treaty regime inspections. The most potent compounds from this family, novichok-5 and novichok-7, are supposedly around 5-8x more potent than VX, however the exact structures of these compounds have not been reliably verified.

One of the key manufacturing sites was a chemical research institute in what is now Uzbekistan, and small, experimental batches of the weapons may have been tested on the nearby Ustyurt plateau.

Two broad families of organophosphorus agents have been claimed to be Novichok agents. First are a group of organophosphorus compounds with an attached dihaloformaldoxime group, with the general formula shown below, where R = alkyl, alkoxy, alkylamino or fluorine and X = halogen (F, Cl, Br) or pseudohalogen such as C≡N. These compounds are extensively documented in Soviet literature of the time, but it is unclear whether they are in fact the potent "Novichok" compounds.

Some examples of the first group of compounds reported in the literature are shown below, but it is unknown whether any of these is novichok-5 or novichok-7.

Mirzayanov gives somewhat different structures for Novichok agents in his autobiography, as shown below. He makes clear that a large number of compounds were made, and many of the less potent derivatives reported in the open literature as new organophosphate insecticides, so that the secret chemical weapons program could be disguised as legitimate pesticide research.