In the image
Demonstrations and protests after Navalny’s death on February 16, 2024, happened around the world; in this case, in Amsterdam [Guallendra]
Over decades, the Kremlin has made use of clandestine methods to suppress dissidents and political opponents. One of these methods has been the use of biological weapons (BW), like the nerve agent Novichok. The death of Alexei Navalny in February 2024 is just the tip of a big iceberg regarding the use of BW to suppress dissent by Russia. However, this pattern of persecution is not new, but goes back to the end of the Cold War, having a great impact on international relations and global security as a result of its political and diplomatic implications.
Aleksey Navalny was a Russian lawyer and anti-corruption activist, but most importantly in relation to his death, he was a politician who became well-known due to his criticism towards the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. The critics of the opposition did not just achieve a reaction in the Russian Federation but also influenced the whole international community thanks to both the traditional and the social media.
Navalny promoted mobilizations and protests against the current Russian regime. In 2011 he established the Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF), an organization whose purpose is to investigate corruption activities in the Russian government. As the Kremlin started to see progressive support from the citizens to the denunciation campaigns, Navalny was arrested several times based on different claims, such as embezzlement or misappropriation of funds. However, he continued with his main objective of bringing to light the corruption cases and democratic violations that the Russian administration was carrying out.
After the call for demonstrations following the disqualification of opposition candidates from the Russian municipal elections in 2019, Navalny suffered an “acute allergic reaction” while serving a 30-day sentence in police custody. On August 20, 2020, he fell into a coma. The strongest hypothesis was that his tea might have been poisoned, as his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh explained. In light of the critical situation, the German NGO Cinema for Peace Foundation sent a medical airplane to transfer Navalny to Germany, where the German government confirmed that Navalny had been poisoned with a variant of Novichok, a group of nerve agents, which are very poisonous and prevent the nervous system from working properly. After recovering, he returned to Russia, being immediately arrested and imprisoned. In 2022 he was relocated to a prison in the Russian Artic, where he denounced discriminatory and degrading treatment.
On February 16, 2024, Russian authorities announced Navalny’s death due to natural causes; according to the official version of the events, Navalny was taking a brief walk around the penal colony when he suddenly fell without ever regaining consciousness. However, the international media took this version with some suspicion, although Navalny certainly had health issues.
History of biological weapons use by Russia
The Novichok neurotoxic agent with which Navalny was poisoned in 2020 was developed in the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s. Nevertheless, research regarding biological warfare in the USSR started long before, back in the 1920s, and continued even after signing and ratifying the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), and all along the Cold War. During that time, the USSR had “the most efficient, sophisticated and powerful offensive BW program in the world” as affirmed by Dr. Kenneth Alibek, a microbiologist and ‘bioweaponeer’ and a former manager of the Soviet bioweaponry.
The research of these lethal weapons started by testing animals with ‘Bacillus anthracis,’ which in the end developed the so well-known anthrax, an infection that typically occurs by contact with the skin, inhalation, or intestinal absorption. It was used in World War I by the German troops and, among recent cases, in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorists attacks, when an activist sent envelopes containing the dangerous substance to some US senators and institutions.
After a reorganization of the Soviet BW program, it became more offensive, and led scientists to evaluate the use by the military of a wide range of bacteria such as cholera, plague, tularaemia, typhus, or Q fever. However, due to World War II and the devastating tularemia outbreak that affected the Red Army in Stalingrad in 1942, the Soviets shifted their military doctrine away from tactical battlefield use.
After World War II and during the Cold War, the modernization of weapons was a primary objective, and it was Leonid Brezhnev who, in 1973, initiated the renewal and expansion of the BW program. As a result, a new civilian BW research group named “Biopreparat” was created. The new biological weapons complex was comprised of a sophisticated network of installations and institutions that, during the 1970s and the 1990s, produced tons of anthrax, plague, and smallpox annually to maintain established quotas, which mainly had strategic and operational purposes.
Nonetheless, after the USSR increased its noncompliance activities with the BTWC, the Americans and the British demanded the dismantlement of the Soviet program. It was not until 1992 and after the fall of the USSR that the disarmament process became formalized by means of a trilateral agreement between Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom.
Notable poisoning cases
Even though the Navalny case has been very present recently, it has not been the first time that the Kremlin has used this kind of means for killing political dissidents. During the Cold War, the KGB—or the Russian Committee for State Security—perpetrated several poisonings, one of the most widely known being the ‘Bulgarian umbrella’. This method consisted in an umbrella with a hidden pneumatic mechanism, which injected a poisonous pellet containing ricin—a virulent toxin produced in the seeds of the castor oil plant—that was used for assassinating the Bulgarian writer, Georgi Markov, in 1978 in London. Markov was ‘accidentally’ hit with the tip of the umbrella by a stranger who crossed his path.
After the dissolution of the USSR, the Kremlin kept these practices in some very well-known cases. In 2004, Viktor Yushchenko was competing in the presidential Ukrainian elections when his meal was poisoned with TCDD, also known as an Agent Orange contaminant. In that same year, the poisoning of Anna Politkovskaya,a Russian journalist, occurred. She was openly critical of Putin’s policies in Chechnya and, while she was travelling to Beslan, she collapsed due to a poisoned tea, but she managed to survive. Despite the failed attempt, she was shot two years later, and died in her district of Moscow.
The crime was investigated by Alexander Litvinenko, who had previously been a member of the KGB. More specifically, Litvinenko worked as an intelligence officer during the Chechen War and participated in several military operations in the region. In 1998, he made public allegations against several FSB—Federal Security Service—officials, accusing them of corruption, extortion and murder, among other crimes. In 2000, he left his homeland and fled to London with his family where he was granted asylum. In 2006, Litvinenko accused Putin of the assassination of Politkovskaya and, two weeks later, he felt ill and had to be hospitalized. Even though details have never been revealed, it is widely believed that Litvinenko was poisoned by two agents of the FSBwith polonium, a highly radioactive metal.
Implications for global security
The fact that Russia still makes use of BW for political purposes must be carefully noted, considering the serious consequences attached. There is an immediate and unquestionable impact on the poisoned individuals, who are severely harmed. The intentional use of BW or toxins—like the Novichoks used against Navalny—is proof of their potential damage and reveals the willingness of some states to make use of clandestine and deadly methods to achieve their political objectives. In the Russian case, BW have been mostly used for silencing different forms of political opposition against the government.
Despite disarmament improvements in this field, BW still pose a serious challenge to global security, and recent events raise questions about the effectiveness of existing mechanisms like the BTWC, theoretically designed to prevent such threats. A zoom out picture shows that intentional incidents might lead to an erosion of trust in international norms and agreements, first and foremost in the BTWC. At the same time, however, there is a quasi-universal repudiation of biological weapons, so Russian BW activities are generally regarded as deplorable.
In light of existing proliferation concerns, the international community should seek a multifaceted strategy encompassing diplomatic efforts, the strengthening of BW non-proliferation norms and an enhanced intelligence gathering. Furthermore, it emphasizes the importance of fostering transparency and trust among states to prevent the use of BW for political gains. A quasi-universal collective commitment—the BTWC—has already been achieved. Compliance with and verification of international BW non-proliferation norms is, however, an unresolved challenge for international security.