NOVICHOK

Nerve Agent:

• They are highly toxic chemicals that prevent the nervous system from working properly.
  
  
• They disrupt normal messaging from the nerves to the muscles. This causes muscles to become paralysed and can even cause death.
  
  
• These are among the most lethal chemical weapons and their use is banned under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).
  
  
• Forms: Nerve agents take different forms – including powder and gas – but they tend to be a liquid, which can seep through the skin.
  
  

Novichok:

• Novichok, literally ‘newcomer’ or ‘new boy’, is one of several military-grade nerve agent developed by the Soviet military in the 1970s and 1980s.
  
  
• It acts by destroying the signalling process along the nervous system, much in the same way as other nerve agents like Sarin and VX.
  
  

Recent controversy:

• Prosecutors in Britain have recently charged two officers from GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service, with the attempted murder in England on March 4, of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia with Novichok.
  
  
• Both Skripal and Yulia survived the attack, but the incident increased tensions between Britain and Russia, and led to Cold War-style tit-for-tat expulsions of hundreds of diplomats.