Vladimir Uglev, the Russian scientist involved in developing the deadly Novichok nerve agent later used in the Salisbury poisonings, has died.
Uglev had accused Vladimir Putin’s regime of ordering a “state-level hit” on Britain when the nerve agent was deployed in the 2018 attack.
He died in Russia on October 26, although his death was not reported until more than a week later by the independent investigative outlet The Insider.
His cause of death remains unknown, as does the reason for the delay in making the news public.
Uglev was part of the Soviet scientific team that created Novichok, also identified as A-234. The substance was later used in the attempted assassination of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal, then 66, and his daughter Yulia, then 33, in Salisbury in March 2018.
The Skripals survived the attack. However, Dawn Sturgess, a 44-year-old British mother of three, died after coming into contact with Novichok that had been abandoned inside a perfume bottle.
Speaking about the Salisbury attack, Uglev said he was certain the substance involved was A-234.
“Given the exceptional purity of the sample, it is entirely possible it came from a batch I produced myself,” he said.
Russian scientist Vladimir Uglev developed the Novichok nerve agent used in the notorious Salisbury poisonings
Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy, was pictured alongside his daughter Yulia at his home in Salisbury in 2018
Uglev once said he understood Novichok “like a mother knows her child”.
Describing the Salisbury poisoning, he said: “This was a state-level hit.
“It is difficult to imagine a more serious act of terrorism, particularly one carried out against a permanent member of the United Nations.”
His public criticism of the Russian authorities was followed by a series of incidents that he viewed as persecution.
Only days after speaking out, Uglev was struck by a car while crossing a road near his home in the Black Sea resort of Anapa.
He was thrown onto the vehicle’s bonnet and hit the windscreen, suffering injuries to his head and arm.
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Although the incident raised concerns that he may have been deliberately targeted, Uglev said he believed the crash had been accidental.
He was later targeted by a smear campaign involving false allegations of paedophilia, with anonymous posters put up around Anapa.
A Soviet army serviceman in protective suit handles toxic substances during a visit by Western diplomats and journalists to a chemical weapons research facility in Shikhany, Saratov region, in 1987
Police searched his home, inspected his electronic devices and collected his fingerprints, but found no evidence against him.
According to Uglev, the authorities also declined to investigate those responsible for the accusations, which he linked to Russia’s security services.
He recognised the risks of challenging the Russian state in public.
“Everyone is afraid, but you must learn to control that fear,” he said.
Uglev also commented on the 2020 poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who survived the Novichok attack before dying in a Russian Arctic penal colony in February 2024. His death has been described by critics as a murder.
He supported independent investigators studying the operations of Russian intelligence agencies and their alleged use of chemical weapons.
Investigative journalist Christo Grozev said that although Uglev had helped develop the powerful toxin, he later became “an outspoken critic of its use against civilians”.
Grozev said Uglev had challenged Kremlin denials relating to both the Skripal poisoning and the attack on Navalny.
Born in Kirovsk in September 1946, Uglev studied chemistry in Moscow before joining a highly secretive Soviet chemical weapons research facility in the Saratov region, where he worked from 1975 until 1990.
He was involved in creating some of the earliest Novichok agents.
A British public inquiry published in December 2025 concluded that the Salisbury assassination operation had been authorised by Vladimir Putin himself.
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