meet Russian biochemist Sergei C

  sprawling complex of Institute for Experimental Military Medicine outside St. Petersburg. Photo:  The Insider   A rare public lecture announcement from 2018 shows that leading researchers from the institute were specializing on the effects of organophosphate poisons on the human body – and were tracking the international development of antidotes to those. (Poisons from the Novichok group fall into the larger group of organophosphates--which includes also certain pesticides).  https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2020/10/23/russias-clandestine-chemical-weapons-programme-and-the-grus-unit-21955/

......................................................................................................................

10-23-20  On February 27, 2018, five days before Skripal fell ill, a Russian chemist named

Sergei Chepur flew from St. Petersburg to Moscow on a one-day work trip.  Chepur is the director of a federal research institute called the State Experimental Institute for Scientific Research of Military Medicine, which is based outskirts of St. Petersburg.  According to phone logs obtained by Bellingcat and reviewed by RFE/RL’s Russian Service, during his visit Chepur communicated with several GRU officers and spent time at the military intelligence agency’s headquarters at Khoroshevskoye Shosse 76B in northwest Moscow.  After leaving GRU headquarters on February 27, 2018, phone records show, Chepur proceeded to another military facility in Moscow:  the 27th Military Scientific Center.  Also present at the 27th Military Scientific Center during Chepur’s visit, according to phone records, was organophosphates specialist Viktor Taranchenko, who formerly worked at the 27th center but by that time was a top scientist at the Signal Center.  In the months before his trip to Moscow, Chepur had communicated repeatedly not only with scientists from the

       at south Moscow; credit Bellingcat
Signal Center but also with high-ranking GRU officers.  Among those he contacted, according to phone logs, was Major General Andrei Averyanov, the commander of Unit 29155.

Chepur made at least 65 calls and text messages to Averyanov between May 2017 and September 2019, the phone records show.  The other man identified by Britain authorities was GRU officer Aleksandr Mishkin (aka Aleksandr Petrov), whom Chepur, the St. Petersburg scientist, also called multiple times in the lead-up to the Skripal poisoning.  Chepur also communicated with a third GRU officer who went to England in 2018 -- Denis Sergeyev.

On February 23, a state holiday in Russia, Chepur had dozens of calls and text messages with GRU officers and also doctors and scientists, including a man identified by Bellingcat and The Insider as the Defense Ministry’s chief toxicologist, Vadim Basharin.   The phone logs also show that in the days before and after the Skripal poisoning, Chepur was in communication with two top scientists from another entity also located in the Saratov region and also carrying the number 33: the Defense Ministry’s 33rd Central Experimental Institute for Scientific Research. 

Others who also transferred to Signal Center, south Moscow, include Taranchenko, who was the first person Chepur called when he traveled to Moscow on February 27, 2018, and Andrei Antokhin, who is listed as the Signal Center’s deputy director.

Taranchenko and Antokhin have conducted research into cholinesterase inhibitors, which are found in several drugs as well as in some pesticides, but also in nerve agents such as Novichok. 

Chepur, whose phone log revealed calls with Mishkin, Averyanov and other GRU officers shortly before Skripal’s poisoning, denied having contacts with these people.     https://www.rferl.org/a/exclusive-poisons-patents-phone-logs-records-reveal-russian-scientists-ties-to-military-intelligence/30908850.html

………...................................................