Britain Pinpoints Secretive Russian Facility That Made Deadly Nerve Agent

Britain says it has identified the secretive Russian facility where it believes the deadly Novichok nerve agent, used in the attempted murders of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, was made. The facility is named as Shikhany, which is around 800 kilometers southeast of Moscow, and British intelligence believes it’s been used over the past decade to test whether the Novichok nerve agents could be used in assassinations abroad, according to a report. The stockpiles of nerve agent detected at the facility were small, suggesting it was intended for targeted attacks rather than on the battlefield. Hamish de Bretton Gordon, former commander of Britain’s Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Regiment, who has seen the intelligence, told The Times of London: “The intelligence Britain has clearly points to Russia and Shikhany,” he said, adding: “No doubt the Russians are scrubbing it down as we speak.” De Bretton Gordon said the intelligence disproves claims the Novichok could have come from elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, such as Ukraine or Uzbekistan.