Frog poison, tear gas and Novichok: Inside Russia’s chemical weapons programme

Summary

Battle Lines — “Frog poison, tear gas and Novichok: Inside Russia’s chemical weapons programme”

Podcast: Battle Lines
Host: The Telegraph
Date: February 18, 2026
Featuring: Venetia Rainey (host), Arthur Scott Geddes (host), Hamish de Bretton Gordon (former CO, UK Joint CBRN Regiment), Dr. Gemma Boucher (Centre of Conflict and Health Research, King's College London)

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Overview

This episode delves into the recent confirmation that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was killed with a rare frog-derived poison, unpacking how investigators cracked the case, the broader implications for Russia’s chemical weapons capacity, and what this says about both battlefield and assassination-use toxins. The hosts are joined by two leading experts—Hamish de Bretton Gordon and Dr. Gemma Boucher—who offer deep-dive analysis into the science, forensics, geopolitics, and future risks (including AI-designed chemical agents) associated with chemical weapons.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Navalny Case: What Happened and How Was It Proven?

• Navalny’s Death Reexamined
  • Two years prior, suspicions abounded when Navalny died in prison. New evidence confirms he was killed with a rare frog poison, “ipibatidine.” (02:10)
• What is Ipibatidine?
  • “It was identified in the 1970s through chemical investigations looking at frogs in the Ecuadorian jungles… far more effective than morphine [as a painkiller]... [but] the very narrow range that it is effective… sits very, very close to the much wider range where it's lethal...”
    — Dr. Gemma Boucher (02:55)
  • Shelved as a medical prospect due to its lethality, but of interest to malign actors for chemical weapons (03:50).
• Who Else Has It?
  • While research uses exist worldwide, open publications from Russian institutions are a “smoking gun” indicating weaponization potential. Russia leverages this ambiguity for disinformation. (04:10)
• Synthesis and Use in Assassination
  • Russia didn’t harvest the compound from frogs; it synthesized it from scratch in labs:
    “I like to think of it kind of like Lego blocks… you could go into a separate box of Lego and build the same structure yourself…”
    — Dr. Gemma Boucher (05:17)
  • Small quantities suffice for targeted killings, so stockpiles can be hidden. (05:17)
• Forensic Challenge and Triumph
  • Getting tissue samples out of Russia was “a heroic tale… quite an impressive story.” (11:25)
  • “Once you have a decent sample... it’s so very important they are collected and prepared properly so that they are admissible… Porton Down is a designated OPCW laboratory…”
    — Hamish de Bretton Gordon (06:44)
  • Confirmation came from several European labs, eliminating doubt about the Kremlin’s involvement.

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Russia’s Use of Chemical Weapons: Flexing Muscles and Sending Messages

• Signature Tactics
  • “They want to give a message they can kill anybody they want, anywhere in the world by using these exotic toxins...”
    — Hamish de Bretton Gordon (01:42, 06:44)
• Sending Signals
  • “It’s so unusual that it is as if they are trying to send some sort of signal… [Putin] has only stayed in power for 25, 26 years by being absolutely ruthless.”
    — Venetia Rainey & Hamish de Bretton Gordon (09:15-09:31)
  • Examples cited: Polonium-210 (Litvinenko, 2006), Novichok (Skripal poisoning), and a pattern of targeted killings. (09:31)

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Chemical Weapons on the Battlefield: Ukraine as a Case Study

• Trench Warfare, Modern Tactics
  • Russia is using “industrial amounts of chemical weapons” in Ukraine—especially chloropicrin, “the first chemical weapon ever used in the First World War.” (17:16)
  • Battlefield Impact:
    “Using chloropicrin on the trenches is exactly the same as using a nerve agent… it gets people out of the trenches and then they’re sort of shot conventionally.”
    — Hamish de Bretton Gordon (22:42)
  • The use of “poor man’s nuclear weapons”—cheap, effective, and with significant psychological and tactical impacts. (17:16, 22:42)
• Range of Agents
  • Russia maintains an arsenal from “boutique” assassination toxins to mass-effect battlefield agents. Evidence suggests ongoing research (novichok variants, chemical precursors). (22:42)

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State of Russia’s Chemical Weapons Program

• Continued Research
  • “You have to presume the Russians will always use their scientific apparatus to do what they can to develop new agents… they like to assassinate people in ways that grab headlines…”
    — Dr. Gemma Boucher (20:53)
  • “Whether Russia has got anything in between... it’s pretty clear they are still working on novichok.”
    — Hamish de Bretton Gordon (22:42)
• Supply Chain and Infrastructure
  • Beyond the labs, Russia maintains extensive supply chains for precursors and manufacturing—key targets for disruption. (20:53)

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Artificial Intelligence and the Next Generation of Chemical Weapons

• Dual-Use Dangers
  • AI can exponentially accelerate toxin discovery and design—an experiment generated 40,000 dangerous molecules in six hours, including nerve agents (VX). (25:49)
  • “Of course, as with any dual use technology, there's promise and the peril… when you have that ability in AI… that gives the opportunity to turbo speed the kind of research…”
    — Dr. Gemma Boucher (26:22)
• International Response
  • Work is underway at the policy level (via Chemical and Biological Weapons Conventions and the WHO) to address these new threats. (27:54)

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Legal, Policy, and Strategic Responses

• International Treaties and Enforcement Limits
  • The Chemical Weapons Convention and OPCW have made progress but struggle with state noncompliance and lack real enforcement capability. (28:04)
  • “We now have evidence… this will go [to the ICC]… it does seem remote at the time, and particularly with Russia.”
    — Hamish de Bretton Gordon (28:04)
• Erosion of Taboo
  • The “taboo” on chemical weapons use has been shattered, particularly after inaction in Syria (“the Obama red line”). (30:27)
  • “The taboo needs to be tried to be replaced, because these are horrific weapons.”
    — Hamish de Bretton Gordon (30:40)
• Information Warfare
  • Russia not only uses chemical weapons but muddies the waters with disinformation, exploiting confusion for diplomatic cover. (32:08)
  • “[They] come out with preposterous narratives… we have to step up on the information front and say we will counter this at every possible turn.”
    — Dr. Gemma Boucher (32:08)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “If you have no morals or scruples, you’d use chemical weapons all the time because they’re so effective.”
  — Hamish de Bretton Gordon (17:16)
• On information warfare:
  “It's not just the use of chemical weapons… that erodes the integrity of the convention. It's also... making a mockery of it by malign actors, by those who further preposterous narratives.”
  — Dr. Gemma Boucher (32:08)
• Personal Reflection:
  Arthur Scott Geddes reveals that his great-grandfather survived a gas attack at the Somme—“chlorine gas. And yeah, I think he was quite sick afterwards.” (34:01)

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Important Timestamps

• 02:10 — Introduction to new findings on Navalny’s death
• 02:55–04:02 — The science and origin of ipibatidine
• 05:17 — Synthesis of frog poison in Russia
• 06:44 — How evidence was gathered and verified
• 09:31 — The political message in Russia’s use of exotic poisons
• 11:25 — Forensic and lab investigation processes
• 13:47 — The international announcement with Yulia Navalny at Munich Security Conference
• 17:16 — Russian chemical agents on the Ukrainian battlefield
• 22:42 — Range of chemical agents and continuing Russian research
• 25:49 — AI in chemical weapons design
• 28:04 — Legal tools and the limits of international conventions
• 30:40 — Has the taboo on chemical weapons broken?
• 32:08 — Information warfare and misdirection by Russia
• 34:01 — Personal family link to chemical weapons history (The Somme)

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Final Takeaways

• Russia uses chemical weapons for both high-profile assassinations and as a brute force tool on the battlefield.
• Novel or exotic agents (“boutique agents” like ipibatidine) serve propaganda and psychological objectives as much as physical ones.
• Detection and attribution are possible but require painstaking international scientific cooperation.
• The taboo on chemical weapons is weakening, and Russia exploits both the limits of enforcement and the power of information warfare.
• The AI revolution poses fresh risks of hyper-accelerating weapon discovery.
• Ongoing, determined action—both technical and informational—is needed to hinder these programs, reinforce taboo, and call malign actors to account.

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For further detail and ongoing coverage of global security and health, follow Battle Lines on your preferred podcast app and subscribe to The Telegraph.

Transcript

[Dr. Gemma Boucher]

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[Hamish de Bretton Gordon]

They want to give a message. They can kill anybody they want, anywhere in the world by using these exotic toxins. It's also sort of trying to flex their muscles. These cuts will make the world less healthy, less safe and less prosperous. Countries are continuing extremely risky research into bioweapons. It is a famine.

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The Gaza Famine.

[Venetia Rainey]

I'm Venetia Rainey.

[Arthur Scott Geddes]

And I'm Arthur Scott Geddes, and this.

[Venetia Rainey]

Is Battle Lines Global Health security. It's Wednesday, 18th of February, 2026.

[Arthur Scott Geddes]

Two years ago, Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, died in a Siberian prison cell. There was a public outcry at the time and many suspected foul play, but nothing could be proved. That is, until last weekend. Five European countries, including the uk, announced they had made a startling discovery. Navalny had been killed with a rare frog poison.

[Venetia Rainey]

So how did Russia do it? How did we find out that they'd done it? And what does this mean for what we know about Russia's store of chemical weapons? To Discuss all of this. We're joined by Hamish de Breton Gordon, a former commanding officer at the UK's Joint Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Regiment, and Dr. Gemma Boucher from the Centre of Conflict and Health Research at King's College London. Hamish and Gemma, welcome to Battleland's Global Health Security.

[Arthur Scott Geddes]

Gemma, can you tell us what this frog poison actually is?

[Dr. Gemma Boucher]

How does it work, this frog poison? Ipibatidine. It was identified in the 1970s through chemical investigations looking at frogs in the Ecuadorian jungles, essentially. But as in all kind of medical discovery, when this was identified as an effective painkiller, it was identified that what was particularly effective about this was that it disrupted the communication between cells in the central nervous system. So. So it's a painkiller. It's really, really effective as a painkiller, far more effective than something such as morphine. The problem with it is that the very narrow range that it is effective as a painkiller is, sits very, very close to the much wider range where it's lethal in dosage. And so it was essentially shelved as a potential prospect for widespread use as a painkiller, which could have potentially replaced morphine and other things. That's being said, of course, when toxic compounds such as this are identified, it then opens up the opportunities for malign actors to further develop their chemical weapons development programs and then use these compounds that they can synthesize in their own laboratories for use for malign instances. And that appears to be what's happened here.

[Venetia Rainey]

Do we know how many countries might have stores of this compound or have done research into this type of toxic element?

[Dr. Gemma Boucher]

It's important to remember that a compound like this, as opposed to other types of what we can call maybe the nefarious compounds that have medicinal properties, and it's actually a relatively simple chemical structure. So simply having this compound in a laboratory isn't necessarily in and of itself a sign of malign use. It might be used for research purposes on the central nervous system. For example, we know that there are offenders in the chemical weapons space, and so no one should be surprised when countries such as Russia then turn out to have these. And in fact, organisations within Russia that are suspected to be developing chemical weapons have published work on this compound, ipibatidine, which is again, a fairly unexpected sort of smoking gun for this sort of work. There are lots of countries that we know develop chemical weapons, but equally the basic properties of this are medicinal. So we might find related chemicals in plenty of countries, laboratory systems, and that potentially could be used by actors such as Russia, as a target in the information space to try and claim that they're not the only ones who have these sorts of stocks.

[Arthur Scott Geddes]

So how did Russia get together enough of this compound for it to be useful for this purpose? You know, they're not going into the jungle to collect these frogs, are they?

[Dr. Gemma Boucher]

No, absolutely not. The poison dart frog narrative, of course it grabs headlines, it sounds outlandish. Of course it is outlandish in origin, but actually the kind of concept that compounds from nature are used in medicines and potentially for malign use later is not so outlandish. That's quite common. What Russia has done here, as many medicinal chemists do, is take a naturally occurring compound in the environment, use laboratory techniques, so almost certainly chromatographic techniques, which in the laboratory essentially means. I like to think of it kind of like Lego blocks, right. If you look at a complex structure made out of Lego, you could take the pieces of Lego apart, work out what it is, and then you could go into a separate box of Lego and build the same structure yourself, synthesise it yourself using your own parts. Right. And that's what's happened in a laboratory in Russia. But I think also it's important to say that a compound such as this you probably don't need to have in really large stocks, unlike what they're using on the battlefields in Ukraine, for example, where they will need sort, industrial level facilities to produce large amounts. This, if you're delivering it in a highly directed way, you probably can keep in much smaller quantities within discrete research laboratories.

[Venetia Rainey]

Well, Hamish, I know this is your speciality subjects, and we'll come on to more of sort of what's being used on the Ukrainian battlefield later. But just on this particular case, can you talk us through how the UK and these four other European countries managed to prove that this poison had been used? How did we get a sample of Navalny out of Russia? And talk us through some of the work that the scientists at Porton down did to sort of come to this conclusion.

[Hamish de Bretton Gordon]

Well, I think first of all, none of us are surprised that Navalny was actually murdered by the Russian state. And as Gemma's described, these various toxins, this is straight out of the Russian Security Secret Service handbook. You know, they like to kill people like Navalny with exotic toxins or things like polonium210 isotopes for a number of reasons. I think first of all, they want to give a message they can kill anybody they want anywhere in the world. And secondly, by using these exotic toxins, it's also Sort of trying to flex their muscles. But I think the counter to that is exactly your question. How do we actually know this? How do we get these samples? And I think it shows a number of things. I expect Putin probably wants us to know this, but having said that, the ease, relative ease that we've got hold of these samples, it's a bit like the relative ease we track down the agents who delivered the Novichok to Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, where I'm talking to you from. So the Russian Secret Service is a little bit inept now, how these samples have come out. It's clear that, you know, there are people who have opposed the state in Russia. There are people close to Navalny, and I think it also probably underlies the expertise of our own security service to get this and the actual analysis. Gemma's probably far more qualified to speak than I am, but as she said, once you have a decent sample, and with all my experience of collecting samples in Syria, it's so very important that the samples are collected and prepared properly so that they are admissible. We don't know the full extent of that, but the fact that Yvette Cooper, the Foreign Secretary, has been so demonstrative in what she said that there is no good reason that this toxin could be in Navalny. The only way it could happen would be through some sort of state activity. But I think you'd need a relatively small sample of human tissue. And Porton down is a Designated Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Laboratory certified and has the expertise to be able to work out exactly these sort of things. Things. And I think also a lab in Sweden and somewhere else, another designated OPCW lab, has confirmed this. So I think we are pretty certain what the government is saying is absolutely true. But again, these things leave a marker, and the marker points absolutely directly to the Kremlin.

[Venetia Rainey]

It's fascinating, isn't it? Because it's just like Russia leaving its fingerprints all over. And as you mentioned, it's just like with Novichok. It's so unusual that it is as if they are trying to send some sort of signal. I wonder if you could just talk a bit more about what signal you think Russia is trying to send. The Hamish.

[Hamish de Bretton Gordon]

I think the most important thing that one needs to realize is that this is how Russia does its business. And the signal it's trying to show. We're talking about an autocratic dictatorship here. Putin has only stayed in power for 25, 26 years by being absolutely ruthless. And anybody who opposes him, of course, we look back to 2006, Litvinenko, another opposition leader, murdered with polonium 210. I mean, polonium 210. I mean,' we talk for hours about, you could probably buy it on the Dark Web, but it's going to cost you millions of dollars a drop. Therefore, again, it points so clearly at the Russians, then Skripal, a double agent. In the way that the spy world works, if you're exposed as a double agent, you're supposed to retire and stop doing stuff. The Russians seem to think that he wasn't doing that, so that they were going to take him out. And there are a whole host of other cases as well, of people who have opposed Russia, who have fallen off balconies, mysteriously died. It is. That is the message the Russians are trying to show, and that is the way that these sort of autocratic dictators stay in position, that they've got the reach, they can reach in and do things. And I think the head of MI6 and others recently have said, we're in this sort of gray zone. We are in a hybrid war with Russia, and these are the sort of activities that they do. And I'm sure people get terribly terrified by it. But I think this Navalny case and the fact we know so much about it, should reassure people that actually, quite apart from the Russians doing all this sort of espionage and this sort of activity, there are an awful lot of people in the west trying to counter it and actually doing a pretty good job as well.

[Arthur Scott Geddes]

So at the same time as Russia's, obviously, I think, trying to send a message. The poison that they've used, I think, can be very difficult to detect in the body and wouldn't be detected by a normal kind of autopsy screening. How would you go about looking for signs of this poisoning, Gemma?

[Dr. Gemma Boucher]

This is a challenge, right? And this is where we get into the kind of forensic side, beyond the medical side, because it's a heroic tale, really, of this smuggling of samples from Russia. It's quite an impressive story. And look, when you're trying to identify samples, as you say quite rightly, this is not going to come up in a standard panel. You know your normal drugs, you know that you're going to screen for alcohol, et cetera. So, firstly, there's going to have to be decisions about what samples are taken. And that's really important because when it comes to subsequent investigations, you also need to be able to prove that you've had some kind of custody over that sample, too. So in this scenario, the best kind of sample would be blood but equally, you know that there are challenges depending on when the individuals that had access to the body were able to take it. There's a question over the condition of post mortem blood is kind of a gruesome conversation for today. But so there are other samples that could be taken. For example, liver samples might be one option for exposures that may take, I think over more time, hair samples. I think that's probably not the case in this scenario. And that would then need to be smuggled obviously out of the country and taken to a laboratory. And that's why there are many reasons why, particularly the designation of the lab at Porton down as an OPCW lab, but also the fact that there are very few laboratories in the world that are capable of testing those biological samples against the known prohibited secret covert agents that are not in the public sphere, essentially. So we can all presume that it would have been also tested against novichok agents. That would be a reasonable presumption here. Those kinds of laboratories also have the ability to test for micro samples. All right, so using specialist equipment, specialist techniques. I mean, in fact, it seems that the laboratory, again that I mentioned earlier, that is suspected of having a significant role in Russian chemical programs, had published a paper or published research on the detection of micro quantities of this compound a few years ago. So it's possible it's out there in the literature and there's no reason, if it's out in the public literature are laboratories and it Porton down and in other settings, maybe in Sweden or elsewhere that are OPCW designated, certainly will have those capabilities.

[Venetia Rainey]

Just finally on this case, Yulia Navalny must feel so vindicated because she has said right from the off, this is foul play. My husband was poisoned. And as you mentioned, Hamish, I mean, a lot of people won't be surprised. We suspected it. But also, as Gemma says, a heroic effort to actually prove it. What did you make, Hamish, of the announcement over the weekend at Munich Security Conference when Yulia was able to stand alongside Yvette Cooper, the British Foreign Minister, and others to finally announce this finding?

[Hamish de Bretton Gordon]

I think he slightly took us all by surprise. I mean, going back to Gemma's description about the samples and how they're analyzed, you know, the chain of evidence absolutely key. We don't know when this analysis was done. Now, I think the timing of the announcement was probably the most important thing. Here you've got all the sort of world leaders on the west in one place and trying to garner support for Ukraine, just demonstrating, you know, what a terror state that Russia is. So I think it was a great thing that actually she has been vindicated from everything else that the rest of us had been talking about and assuming and leaving in no doubt. This is the sort of thing that we're up against. This is the thing that they're prepared to do from a chemical weapons side. I saw a lot of it in Syria as well and we have the same issues of trying to get samples out. And it is another war crime. You know, this is, you know, in effect a war crime. We've got the evidence now presumably go to the International Criminal Court and at some stage, hopefully those responsible will have their day in court. But yeah, I think it really was a big, big moment and let's hope it galvanizes people to make sure that we can get a just peace as quickly as possible.

[Arthur Scott Geddes]

In Ukraine after the break, could Russia be using AI to develop new chemical weapons?

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[Dr. Gemma Boucher]

Foreign.

[Arthur Scott Geddes]

Welcome back. You're listening to Battle Lines Global Health Security. We're still chatting to Hamish de Bretton Gordon and Dr. Gemma Boucher so what does this tell us about the state of chemical weapons research in Russia? You know, is this use of this new poison evidence that they're continuing to develop new weapons or is that too strong?

[Hamish de Bretton Gordon]

I don't think so at all. I mean, I have written often and spoke about the Russian chemical weapons program. You go back to November 2017, when the Kremlin declared to the world that they had no chemical weapons left. They destroyed them all and they harangued America for still having some chemical weapons. A few months later, my hometown, Novichok, spread on the door of Sergei Skripol's house. And then ultimately Dawn Sturgis dying of novichok poisoning. That was a pretty clear indicator that I think that they would developed it. And from my time in Syria, the Russians, although I don't think they had their hands on the nerve agents used by Assad or the chlorine, but they certainly saw it all happening. And all the modus operandi the Syrians were using was straight out of the Russian handbook. You then wind forward to Ukraine and over the last 24 months we've seen industrial amounts of chemical weapons used. Ostensibly something called chloropicrin, which people will know as sort of CS gas. But it was the first chemical weapon ever used in the first World War and it is designated as one. And it has an effect of a chemical weapon. The Ukrainians have detailed 9,500 uses. And I speak to brigades quite often. And you know, a few months ago I spoke to one brigade in the Donbas and they've been hit five times that day with chloropicrin. It's not sort of headline news because you know this, it's right control agent, but it's having the same effect. But your question on the chemical weapons program, I think the navalny thing just hopefully underwrites to people what the Russian state is capable of now, chemical weapons. I've said, and I wrote in my own memoir, that if you have no morals or scruples, you'd use chemical weapons all the time because they're so effective. I was in Aleppo in December 2016 and that had been under conventional siege for four years. But 17 days of Syrians dropping chlorine barrel bombs broke that siege and it was phenomenal. And I saw an exercise when I came back on Salisbury Plain of a British battle group trying to attack a village on Salisbury Plain, simulated using conventional means. The way the excise unfolded, it sort of happened in about half an hour. And I said to the generals there, I said the only way you're going to take this village in half an hour is to use chemical weapons, but of course, they are beyond the pale. So I think, you know, when you put yourself in the Kremlin where you have no limits, something like chemical weapons, which are, you know, I describe them as a poor person's nuclear weapons. You know, they're very, very easy and fairly cheap to make, but hugely effective. You know, the final bit on this, I go back to the Obama red line in Syria in September 2012, and again, I was in Syria at the time, and I was in Syria a year later when the massive attack was happening on Ghouta in Damascus that killed 1500 people. Actually, I was there a few months ago seeing the ground site and nothing demonstrative was done. And therefore, I think that sort of gave to Putin and the Russians. Well, we can probably get away with using this stuff where we probably can't get away with a tactical nuclear weapon, which I'm sure they would be desperately keen to use in Ukraine if they thought they could get away with it.

[Venetia Rainey]

Gemma, do you want to come in on that? I remember reading about poison factories in Russia, these sort of shady labs with nondescript addresses where researching things like frog poison, which I won't attempt to pronounce, and novichok and all of that sort of thing. What do you think this latest incident tells us about the state of chemical weapons research in Russia?

[Dr. Gemma Boucher]

It tells us that they're still doing it, but I think the epibatatine, it's one of those more what I describe as the sort of boutique agents, right? In contrast to the chloropicrins that are being used on the battlefield. I mean, I spend a lot of time in Ukraine. And although targeted assassination in Ukraine is clearly a concern, the Russians have also shown perfect willingness to gun politicians down in the streets. For example, in Lviv last summer, I was in Lviv at the time that they did it. That was a revolver. In Ukraine, they're particularly focused on using these agents for clearing battlefields. But in terms of the state of the research, I think we have to presume the Russians will always use their scientific apparatus to do what they can to develop new agents. They like to assassinate people, and they like to assassinate people in ways that show that they can assassinate people in interesting ways, in ways that, you know, are gruesome. Grab headlines, you know, why kill someone with polonium? It sends a very clear message, we will harm you and we will harm you in a particularly nasty way. And that's what they did here. So, although I sort of started by saying, in some ways, epibatidine isn't a particularly exciting compound chemically, it sends that message that, yes, we will kill you in what I've described as this boutique way, in this kind of bespoke, targeted way, and you cannot escape us and these facilities. It's not just the facilities and the laboratories themselves, it's also a large supply chain that supplies the agents, precursors, the compounds. These are huge infrastructures, actually. And that's where, if I was advising, people would also suggest that the targets go in terms of intervening in the wider war machine to try and counter some of these programs in Russia.

[Venetia Rainey]

Can one of you give us a sense of the state of Russia's chemical weapons program? What else do we know that they have? We've got these sort of boutique agents that grab headlines, as you say, but probably are not very widely used. We've got riot control agents which they're using quite widely on the battlefield in Ukraine. What else do we know that they have?

[Hamish de Bretton Gordon]

What you've described there is a great range, as Gemma's articulated. You've got the boutique agents for the assassinations. If you shoot somebody, then you're not going to get headline news, but if you kill them with a frog poison, it's all over the papers for days, and that's exactly what Russia wants. And then you've got the chloropicrin, which, you know, the Russians are of course saying, you know, this just use riot control agents all the time in Europe, what's the problem? But actually, it's. To me, it's really clever because using chloropicrin on the trenches is exactly the same as using a nerve agent, you know, sarin or novichok. It has the same effect. It gets people out of the trenches and then they're sort of shot conventionally. Now, whether Russia has got anything in between, it's pretty clear that they are still working on novichok. Novichok is a sort of range of nerve agents, you know, quite again, boutique. And, you know, the novichok that was used to poison Sergei Skripal was designed so that NATO sensors couldn't pick it up. It was designed to be very persistent. So we couldn't took 18 months to clean up Salisbury for quarter of an eight cup of Novichok. So, you know, that is a hell of a bang for your buck. I know from people in Ukraine, the dread is that they will produce or use something more toxic than chloropicrin. You know, God forbid, if they use Novichok in any quantity. That could be devastating. But whether they have done that is unlikely. A place called Shakany, which was the sort of massive Russian port and down 200 km from Moscow, is where they used to produce chemical weapons in large scale. That mysteriously was bulldozed to the ground shortly after the Skripal attack. And then they've divulged or moved to these other places which don't seem to have the capacity. So we don't know. I think we assume that they have an active program, they're developing it. The standard operating procedures they're using on the front line is straight out of the handbook that they have. It's straight out of the handbook from the First World War, to be perfectly frank. But, you know, it's so simple and effective. It goes back to my comment on how effective these weapons are. I know I recently visited the British Army's Land Warfare Center Exploitations team in Warminster where they look at all the lessons and see how we can adapt. And everybody talks about drones all the time, but, you know, that is just another element of the battlefield. But what they've also identified is going forward, our soldiers in NATO need to be able to operate in this contaminated environment because, you know, the Russians are using it and developing it and it's having such a marginal advantage. So, yeah, I think this is something that we need to concern ourselves with. And I think, you know, certainly from lessons learned in the British military, they are very much aware of it. But all the, you know, dare I say, all the glamour and the money at the moment is pointing towards drones. But, you know, if you can't fight in a contaminated environment to start with, the fact that drones are also dropping this stuff and attacking you is a sort of a secondary issue that you've got to cover as well.

[Arthur Scott Geddes]

Gemma, I just want to follow on for something you were saying earlier. We've done a lot of reporting on global health about the concerns people have about artificial intelligence being used to help design new chemical and biological warfare agents, and also possibly to give different groups the ability to create these things. One of your colleagues is actually the co author on a paper a few years ago in which they did an extraordinary experiment and it took them six hours and they generated 40,000 molecules, including VX, VX gas. What's your sense of whether Russia is interested in this kind of thing? Is this something we should be concerned about?

[Dr. Gemma Boucher]

Absolutely. I think the work you're referring to from my colleague Philippa Lensos really sort of helped kind of raise the awareness over the risks around AI. And of course, as with any dual use technology, there's promise and the peril. So the promise is that these kinds of technologies will allow us to identify promising compounds for drug discovery, cancer treatments, treatment against infections, etc, etc. Of course, when you have that ability in AI, using AI to identify compounds that are particularly harmful, particularly potent of the VX type, of the novichok types, that gives the opportunity to turbo speed the kind of research that you would do through traditional techniques in laboratories. And that is the concern. That's the concern, particularly in the biological weapons space. Actually this is where this conversation has been really alive and of course also in the chemical weapons space. I think perhaps the attention has been less on this in chemical weapons space than in bio, not because it's less relevant or less of a prospect, but simply because there are plenty of chemical weapons being used today already, right? So we're not talking about the future, whereas, you know, to the best of our knowledge at the moment, biological weapons, touch wood, are not being used on the battlefields or for targeted assassinations. So it certainly is a major concern and a lot of work is being done at various levels, not just the conventions, the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons Convention, but also in the sort of the health organizations, the World Health Organization, which obviously has a special interest in research being done properly for drugs that serve us as humanity, not simply imperil us.

[Venetia Rainey]

You mentioned the conventions there, Hamish. What can actually be done when a country doesn't comply with these conventions? I mean, what tools do we actually have available to sanction Russia over this?

[Hamish de Bretton Gordon]

Well, they're in the challenge, absolutely. And I think, you know, picking up on, on a point of Gemma's, you know, one thing about chemical weapons is there are so much toxic industrial chemicals like chlorine, like ammonia available that you can buy off the shelf that simulate a much worse chemical weapon that actually, you know, because psychology is so important in warfare and particularly in this sort of warfare, that's the problem. But it's. But when it comes back to what you can do, the Chemical Weapons Convention, which most countries in the world are signed, including Russia and the Organization, the prohibition of chemical weapons have actually done a pretty good job since its inception 30 or so years ago and removed 95 plus percent of chemical weapons off the world. Sadly, on the biological side, I think we're in a much more challenging space because the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, again is a convention is signed and we shouldn't be doing this sort of stuff. But unfortunately there's very little funding for it and that there is not a police force like the apcw. I mean, I was very struck once in one of my trips to Syria, and it was a time when it was after the Obama Red Line, and we did nothing. And there were only very few of us who managed to operate in Syria. And a lot of the Syrians are saying, you know, Hamish, why are you not doing anything? Why aren't you helping us when Assad is, you know, murdering all our, you know, all our people and attacking our hospitals? And it was really difficult. But what I did say is we'll collect evidence because at some stage, people will get their comeuppance. I fought in the Bosnian wars, and most of the generals who committed atrocities there are either dead or in the Hague. So there is the possibility. It does seem remote at the time, and particularly with Russia. What are we doing about Navalny being murdered by this chemical? Very little, except we now have evidence. So that at some stage, to add to the war crimes that Putin has already been indicted for, this will go there. So I think it's very difficult, but we just must be forthright and do what we can, and eventually people will get their comeuppance. But it's not a perfect world. I mean, that, unfortunately, is the case. And there are many other things vexing people at the moment, and it's just making sure that this stays in the spotlight and eventually we hold people to account, as we should do.

[Arthur Scott Geddes]

A final question, if I may, Hamish. You've had a lot of experience dealing in this field, you know, from Syria to Salisbury. Do you think that the taboo around the use of these weapons is actually being eroded?

[Hamish de Bretton Gordon]

I think on the face of it, you've got to agree that it has. We always used to talk about the taboo after the First World War. I mean, after the First World War, chemical weapons weren't used for a long time. Even Hitler decided not to use them in the Second World War, despite the fact he spent years and no doubt huge resources developing nerve agents like Sarin. But he never used them. And it wasn't really until we came to the halaj attack in 1988, when Saddam Hussein killed thousands of Kurds in the town called Halabjah. And then the Iran Iraq War that it started to use again. But again, that was, you know, it wasn't headline news. It was. It was sort of fairly small stuff. But I think the Obama Red Line really blew the taboo completely to smithereens. And from there, people are seeing that they can get away with it. Whereas perhaps they can't get, you know, Putin certainly couldn't get away, I don't think, by using nuclear weapon. So it is a concern. And that taboo needs to be tried to be replaced, because these are horrific weapons. They're very toxic industrial chemicals. You can buy, I think, 260 tons of this stuff in the UK without even a license. Now, I'd hope if somebody sold you that they might ring up the local police and say, you know, this is a bit odd, but. But, yeah, I think the taboo's gone and we need to do all we can to replace them. Because the First World War, the devastation of the First World War is still synonymous with the use of chemical weapons. And we shouldn't forget that.

[Dr. Gemma Boucher]

That I echo what Hamish has said on this, and I think we need to be mindful that we have to keep working with the conventions. They are our instruments for maintaining these safeguards. But that where we've also mentioned this hybrid aspect of current warfare, we can also expect the information aspect of warfare to be significantly amped up by the Russians in the coming weeks on this. And it's not just the use of chemical weapons or any other weapon such as this that erodes the integrity of the convention. It's also the making a mockery of it by malign actors, by those who further preposterous narratives. And we've seen this repeatedly in the Biological Intoxic Weapons Convention by Russian delegations. We see this repeatedly at the opcw, at the Chemical Weapons Convention, by Russian delegations as well, and others. You know, that it's worth saying it is. And others. And I think for me, that was one of the reasons why this dart frog poison was put out, this narrative, because in some ways it's unhelpful to put out this kind of outlandish concept because it's not actually from a poison dart frog. Right. But in something we've seen the Russians come out with preposterous narratives. No one wants to be actually having an argument about poison dart frogs at the Chemical Weapons Convention. Right. But I think we have to be prepared to deal with the convention at the level of the technical, the investigatory, which we've done. And I think the UK should be commended for the work that it's done and its scientists at Porton Down. And now we have to step up on the information front and say we will counter this at every possible turn. You cannot keep coming at the convention with lies and preposterous claims about what everyone else is doing, because you're doing it yourself. Hey.

[Venetia Rainey]

Mr. Bretton Gordon, former commanding officer of the UK's Joint Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Regiment, and Dr. Gemma Bowsher, senior Research Associate for the Centre of Conflict and Health Research at King's College London. Thank you very much for joining us on Battlelines. I believe you've got a personal experience that's relevant to this conversation.

[Arthur Scott Geddes]

Right, well, I was talking to my grandmother the other day and she revealed that her dad, my great grandfather, actually survived being gassed and the Somme.

[Venetia Rainey]

No way.

[Arthur Scott Geddes]

Yeah.

[Hamish de Bretton Gordon]

Wow.

[Arthur Scott Geddes]

Chlorine gas. And yeah, I think he was quite sick afterwards.

[Venetia Rainey]

Yeah, I was going to say there must be some long lasting effects from that.

[Arthur Scott Geddes]

Yeah, awful.

[Venetia Rainey]

Well, I thought it was a really interesting discussion and always good to also have that sort of check on. I mean, look, we work a news organization and do people here get very excited when they hear dart frog, Ecuadorian dart frog poison? They do, they do. But I thought that was a good sort of broad ranging discussion about the reality of Russia's chemical.

[Arthur Scott Geddes]

And it's interesting, isn't it, to think about how those details and these kind of newspaper headlines that we make think might further Russia's narrative in some way.

[Venetia Rainey]

Yeah, that is quite a sobering thought. But I think also chatting to, well, both Hamish and Gemma actually about the sort of mass use of chemical weapons that Russia is engaging with on the Ukrainian battlefield. I think that's a really important point to draw out of this because as you say, this is headline grabbing stuff and I think we all kind of knew that Navalny was killed by Russia one way or another. So, okay, the details are obviously interesting, but Russia uses chemical weapons. I think that's the important point to draw out of all of this.

[Arthur Scott Geddes]

Yep, exactly. That's all for today's episode. We'll be back on Friday. Goodbye.

[Dr. Gemma Boucher]

Goodbye.

[Venetia Rainey]

Battle Lines is an original podcast from the Telegraph, created by David Knowles and hosted by me, Venetia Rainey and Arthur Scott Geddes. If you appreciated this podcast, please consider following Battle Lines on your preferred podcast app. And if you have a moment, leave a review as it helps others find the show. To stay on top of all of our news, subscribe to the Telegraph, sign up to our Global Health newsletter or listen to our sister podcast, Ukraine the latest. You can also get in touch directly by emailing battle linestelegraph.co.uk or contact us on X. You can find our handles in the show.

[Dr. Gemma Boucher]

Notes.

[Venetia Rainey]

The producer is Sophie o'. Sullivan. The Executive Producer is Louisa Wells. Telegraph's Global Health Security team is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.

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