Revenge, it is said, is a dish best served cold, and Russia’s revenge on traitors is one of the coldest, most poisonous dishes on the planet. On March 4, 2018, 66-year-old Sergei Srkipal and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia, visiting from Moscow, were found critically ill, slumped on a park bench in the English city of Salisbury. The British government stated that the pair had been poisoned by a nerve agent called Novichok, manufactured only in Russia, which causes respiratory and cardiac arrest. The poison had been smeared on Sergei’s front door knob and absorbed through the palms of their hands.
Sergei Skripal was a former Russian military intelligence officer who had started spying for Britain’s MI6 intelligence agency in the 1990s, passing on Russian state secrets and the names of hundreds of Russian agents. In 2004, he was arrested in Russia for spying and two years later, sentenced to 13 years in prison. In 2010, as part of a spy swap, Skripal found himself a free man and settled into the medieval town of Salisbury. There are rumors that he continued to work with MI6, which may be the real reason for the assassination attempt.
Their goal was to develop odorless, tasteless, and colorless poisons.
Vladimir Putin’s government has denied involvement in the Skripal poisoning and accused Britain of planting the nerve agent on the door knob to besmirch Russia’s reputation. Surprisingly, the victims have been released in good health from the hospital after many weeks of care. Unsurprisingly, they have refused to meet with Russian representatives. The Russian government accused the UK of holding the two Russian nationals against their will.
Russian state-sponsored poisoning is almost 100 years old. In 1921, the Soviets established their first laboratory — the Kamera — for the manufacture of poisons. Their goal was to develop odorless, tasteless, and colorless poisons that victims could not detect when ingested and which would leave no trace, resulting in a coroner’s verdict of death by natural or undetermined causes. Whenever a poison was detected in the corpse of a political activist, it would not be used again. For this reason, the Kamera constantly developed new poisons.
One of the most notorious Russian poison assassinations was that of Georgi Markov, an anti-communist Bulgarian writer. On the morning of September 7, 1978, the forty-nine-year-old was waiting for a bus on London’s Waterloo Bridge when someone poked him in the back of his right thigh with an umbrella. The heavily built man mumbled an apology and stepped into a cab.
Markov soon developed a fever and checked himself into the hospital that evening. He died four days later. Forensic pathologists found in his thigh a pellet the size of a pinhead with traces of ricin. The pellet had been coated in wax which was designed to melt at the temperature of a human body, slowly releasing the poison into the bloodstream. British investigations revealed that the Bulgarian secret police had worked with the Soviet KGB to plan and execute the hit.
One of the most creative Russian political poisonings involved a lethal lamp. A 62-year-old politician named Anatoly Sobchak had been getting on Vladimir Putin’s nerves during his campaign for president in 2000. Sobchak apparently died of a heart attack in his hotel room. In a striking coincidence, his young, physically fit bodyguards also had heart attacks at the same time. They survived, however, and were treated for symptoms of poisoning.
A million times more poisonous than cyanide, this substance emits radioactive particles that tear cells apart.
A Russian forensics expert believed that someone had sprayed poison onto the reading lamp next to Sobchak’s bed. The heat from the lamp would have vaporized the poison throughout the room, killing its intended victim, who was sitting right next to it, and only sickening the guards who may have stuck their heads in to say goodnight. The vapor would have completely dissipated over time, leaving no trace.
In 2004, fifty-year-old Viktor Yushchenko, an anti-Russia Ukrainian presidential candidate, ate soup with a group of senior Ukrainian officials and almost immediately became deathly ill. He was flown to a Viennese hospital where doctors found he had acute pancreatitis, chloracne in his face, which became swollen and pockmarked, and a serious viral infection. They also discovered in Yushchenko’s blood, levels of TCCD — a chemical compound also known as dioxin — six thousand times above normal, though they estimated he had had 50,000 times the normal amount soon after consuming the poison. TCCD is odorless and tasteless and is 170,000 times more poisonous than cyanide. Researchers concluded that the poison "was so pure that it was definitely made in a laboratory.”
On November 1, 2006, Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko met at a London hotel with two former KGB officers, Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitri Kovtun. Later that day, he fell ill with vomiting and diarrhea. His tea had been poisoned with Polonium-210. A million times more poisonous than cyanide, this substance emits radioactive particles that tear cells apart, destroying the immune system and causing catastrophic organ failure. Tests showed a staggering amount of Polonium-210 in Litvinenko’s samples — two-hundred times the amount needed to kill him.
When he died on November 23, Litvinenko’s body was so radioactive it was left in the hospital bed for two days before being moved to cold storage, and doctors waited a week before performing the autopsy in hazmat suits. However, one of the assassins ended up poisoning himself. Andrey Lugovoy, who had returned to Russia two days after the poisoning, received hospital treatment for…radiation poisoning.
Only one person in the world is known to have survived Kremlin poison twice. In 2015, the anti-Putin activist, 33-year-old Vladimir Kara-Murza, suddenly became violently ill in Moscow during a meeting, about two hours after eating lunch in a restaurant. He vomited, lost consciousness, and was taken to the hospital. Over the next seventy-two hours, his brain swelled and his lungs, heart, kidneys, liver, and intestines started to shut down. In a coma for a week, he was given a five percent chance of survival. Russian doctors removed unidentified toxins from his blood with hemodialysis. Against all odds, he survived, though he suffered nerve damage for a year. His wife sent samples of his blood, hair, and fingernails to a toxicology lab in France, which found traces of heavy metals, dozens of times over the normal amount, but was unable to pinpoint the poison. It seems to be a new, untraceable toxin developed by the Kamera.
Kara-Murza didn’t stop his anti-Putin activism and was poisoned again in 2017. Recognizing the symptoms, he went to the same hospital where he fell into an induced coma as doctors replaced every drop of blood in his body. After his second recovery, Kara-Murza remarked, “The doctors say, if there is a third time, that’ll be it. I will not survive this again,” adding, “I am not brave, just stubborn.”
He was given a five percent chance of survival.
In the Renaissance, it was the Italians who had the sinister reputation of poisoners, and kings across Europe waved tusks they thought to be unicorn horns over their food to detect poison. These days, it’s the Russians who poison, and anti-Putin journalists and activists would be well advised to wave a Geiger counter over their meals before digging in.
Thank you for listening. I hope you have enjoyed the discussion from The Royal Art of Poison, which is available at booksellers everywhere.
Image of Russian Poison © Shutterstock
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