Vladimir Uglev, the Russian scientist who helped develop the deadly Novichok nerve agent, has died at the age of 80.
Uglev had accused Vladimir Putin’s regime of ordering a “state-level hit” on British soil after the 2018 Salisbury poisonings.
He died in Russia on October 26, but news of his death was not made public until more than a week later. The announcement came from The Insider, an independent Russian investigative outlet.
His cause of death remains unknown, as does the reason for the delay in reporting it.
Uglev was part of the Soviet scientific team that developed Novichok, also identified as A-234. The nerve agent was later used in the attempted assassination of former Russian intelligence officer 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 unknowingly coming into contact with Novichok that had been abandoned inside a perfume bottle.
Reflecting on the Salisbury attack, Uglev said he was certain the substance used was A-234.
“Judging by the high purity of the sample, it is quite possible that it was a batch made by my own hands,” he said.
Russian scientist Vladimir Uglev developed the Novichok nerve agent used in the notorious Salisbury poisonings
Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy, with his daughter Yulia at his home in Salisbury
He once said he knew Novichok “like a mother knows her child”.
Discussing the Salisbury poisoning, Uglev said: “This was a state-level hit… You really couldn’t think of a more serious act of terrorism – and one committed against a permanent member of the UN.”
The scientist later faced a series of incidents after publicly criticising the Russian authorities.
Just days after speaking out, he was struck by a car while crossing the road near his home in Anapa, a resort on Russia’s Black Sea coast.
Uglev was thrown onto the vehicle’s bonnet and hit the windscreen, suffering injuries to his head and arm.
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Although the crash sparked fears that he had been deliberately targeted, Uglev said he believed it had been an accident.
He was later subjected to a smear campaign, with anonymous leaflets resembling wanted posters falsely accusing him of being a paedophile distributed 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 took his fingerprints, but found no evidence to support the allegations.
Authorities declined to pursue action against those who accused him. Uglev blamed Putin’s secret services for the harassment.
Mr Uglev acknowledged the danger of publicly challenging the Russian authorities.
‘Everyone is afraid, but you have to control your fear,’ he said.
He also spoke out over the 2020 Novichok poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who survived the attack but was later ‘murdered’ in a Russian Arctic penal colony in February 2024.
He assisted independent investigators examining the activities of Russian intelligence services and their use of chemical weapons.
Investigative journalist Christo Grozev said: ‘While responsible for the development of the powerful toxin, in later years he was an outspoken critic of its use to target civilians.’
Mr Uglev contradicted Kremlin denials in both the Skripal and Navalny cases, he said.
Born in Kirovsk in September 1946, Mr Uglev trained as a chemist in Moscow before working from 1975 to 1990 at a secretive Soviet chemical weapons research establishment in Saratov region.
He developed some of the earliest Novichok agents.
The December 2025 British public inquiry into the Salisbury assassination operation concluded it was authorised by Putin himself.
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