Vladimir Uglev, one of the scientists involved in developing the Novichok family of nerve agents, has died at age 80, The Insider has learned. Uglev previously advised The Insider during investigations into the use of military-grade Novichok nerve agents by Russia’s security services. The late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok agent in 2020.
The Insider learned that Uglev died Oct. 26. In recent years, he had lived in the southern Russian resort city of Anapa.
His name became widely known in 2018 when the biochemist gave a series of interviews following the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, England. Uglev also spoke extensively to the media about the properties of Novichok after Navalny was poisoned in 2020.
“While responsible for the development of the powerful toxin, in later years he was an outspoken critic of its use to target civilians. Uglev openly contradicted the Kremlin denials in both the Skripal and Navalny cases,” The Insider’s lead investigator Christo Grozev wrote on X.
Uglev advised The Insider during investigations into the use of Novichok by the Russian security services. Among them was The Insider and Bellingcat’s 2020 investigation into who produces Novichok in Russia and how it is manufactured.
Vladimir Uglev was born Sept. 20, 1946, in Kirovsk, Russia. In 1975, he graduated from the Dmitry Mendeleev Moscow Institute of Chemical Technology with a degree in the chemistry and technology of biologically active substances. From 1975 to 1990, he worked as a senior researcher at the Volsk branch of GosNIIOKhT, the State Scientific Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology, which was involved in the development of chemical warfare agents.
As The Insider previously reported, before Russia’s declared destruction of its chemical weapons stockpile, substances from the Novichok family were also developed at the Russian Defense Ministry’s 33rd Central Scientific Research and Testing Institute in Shikhany-2, a closed military settlement in the Saratov Region. Uglev worked there on some of the earliest Novichok agents until 1990.
Novichok is a family of highly toxic organophosphorus nerve agents developed as chemical weapons. Agents from this group are prohibited under the Chemical Weapons Convention and are subject to controls by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
