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Killer scientists: who cooked poison for Navalny and what does the German company have to do with it
As The Insider was able to establish, the synthesis of epibatidine (the poison that killed Alexei Navalny) was carried out by employees of the Signal Scientific Center, and some components that could be used for the synthesis of this poison were imported into Russia by ABCR Chemi Rus LLC, whose managers were found in calls from Signal employees. ABCR Chemi Rus LLC is 90% owned by the German company abcr GmbH. Employees of the Russian “ABCR Chemi Rus” could hardly not know who they were dealing with, because The Insider wrote back in 2020 that “Signal” produces poisons (including chemical weapons) for the special services.
Content- 1. Who synthesized the poison
- 2. Where were the reagents for the poison purchased?
- 3. German management: we trust our partners, but we will close the Russian subsidiary
Who synthesized the poison
On February 14, 2026, five countries (Sweden, Great Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands) made a jointstatement that several laboratories independently discovered the alkaloid epibatidine, one of the deadliest poisons existing in nature, in biological samples of Alexei Navalny.
As The Insider previously wrote , the synthesis of this poison in Russia was carried out by scientists from GosNIIOKhT and NPO NTs Signal - Novichok, which was used to poison Navalny in 2020 (as well as to poison Skripal and many other victims), was previously produced there.
How exactly these scientists synthesized epibatidine and what reagents they could use can be judged from a number of articles they published. Read more articles about epibatidine .
Among the authors of the article devoted to the method of detecting epibatidine in the blood, the key authors are employees of the Signal Scientific Center Igor Yuryevich Babkin and Sergey Evgenievich Galan (in the article they are presented as employees of the High Technology Laboratory, located on the territory of RTU MIREA and previously supplied reagents to Signal). Both have academic degrees, but their dissertations are classified and are not publicly available.
Babkin’s dissertation on the topic “Synthesis and evaluation of the properties of physiologically active polyfluorinated 7-azanorbornanes” was defended in the specialty 02/20/23: “Destructive effects of special types of weapons.” Some other co-authors of the article on epibatidine also defended themselves in the same specialty - for example, Colonel Mikhail Gutsalyuk from GosNIIOKhT defended on the topic “Synthesis of physiologically active polyfluorinated bicyclic compounds with sulfur-containing substituents.”
A Russian chemist familiar with the work of Signal employees (and who acted as a consultant to one of the Western laboratories during the chemical analysis of Navalny’s biological samples) explained to The Insider:
“Epibatidine is precisely one of the azanorbornanes that Babkin studied in his dissertation. He began working on this topic (bicycloheptanes, epibatidine derivatives) in the mid-1990s, when he studied at the Military Academy of Chemical Biology, where the third department dealt with this.”
When The Insider journalist called, Igor Babkin pretended that he did not understand the question.
As for Galan, in addition to his research on epibatidine, he also had interesting scientific work: together with the main GRU poisoning specialist Sergei Chepur (about whom The Insider already wrote), in his work “Study of the psycholeptic effects of kappa-opioid agonists,” he studied a substance that drives rats to despair. His goal was to identify doses that cause rats to accept their fate - that is, for example, not actively swim when they engage in forced swimming.
Galan also once worked on nanoforms of drugs, which should, in theory, more effectively deliver the drug to its biological target. A relatively recent article (2019) by Galan is about an opioid receptor agonist that was tested as an analgesic; however, the analgesic effect began with doses of 200 mcg/kg, and the toxic effect began with 3 mcg/kg.
Sergei Galan did not answer the call from The Insider journalist.
Where did you buy the reagents for the poison?
The creators of epibatidine had to order reagents from somewhere, and The Insider studied which Russian firms ordered reagents and excipients in 2022–2023 for the synthesis described in the 2013 GosNIIOKhT article.
More details about the methodology and substances can be found in the help.
Of the 12 substances needed for synthesis according to the scheme of Russian chemists in the cited 2013 article, no one imported two into Russia; of the remaining ten, some are very common, and some are rare. The Insider selected those companies that imported at least four components. There were seven of them, but only four of them imported the key component for creating the bicyclic compound - 1,8-diazabicyclo[5.4.0]undec-7-ene.
The Russian chemist mentioned above, who worked on the synthesis of bicyclic compounds, explained to The Insider:
“All of these substances can be called marker reagents, but 1,8-diazabicyclo[5.4.0]undec-7-ene is the most important of them. Some might even call it a precursor, but this would be incorrect, since a precursor is a base to which some second substance is added to produce the target compound, so in this case we are talking about such a second substance. Among all the other reagents, which may just be some kind of solvents, this is the most reliable marker.”
Having studied the billings of employees of these remaining four companies, The Insider discovered that managers of one of them, ABCR Chemi Rus, regularly called employees of Signal (and also sometimes GosNIIokht and TsNIIKhM - both institutes were associated with the production of Novichok and other chemical weapons), and not with random employees, but with Igor Babkin, co-author of the article on epibatidine.
Thus, Babkin repeatedly telephoned over a long period of time with the Deputy General Director - Commercial Director of ABCR Chemi Rus LLC. Liliya Ansarovna Sabirova , and also called the sales manager Alexey Valentinovich Kiselev (he is also involved in filling out customs declarations at ABCR Chemi Rus).
The employees of ABCR Chemi Rus called (namely, General Director Tatyana Danilova ) and the creator of the “High Technology Laboratory” associated with Signal, Igor Viktorovich Zavarzin , who, in his main position, heads the Laboratory of the Chemistry of Steroid Compounds at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and of this entire group is the most recognized academic scientist with a large number of publications.
According to the Russian Pension Fund, he also had an official position at Signal, but in a conversation with The Insider he said that he had never worked there, was not familiar with Babkin, and only “once upon a time, one of his employees published a joint article with him” (actually a joint article with Babkin in 2017, it was not “one of the employees” who published, but Zavarzin personally, but great scientists sometimes forget the fact of a successful publication for them, especially with a large number of authors).
One way or another, Zavarzin’s connection with Signal is confirmed not only by the cooperation of Signal employees with the Zavarzin High Technology Laboratory, but also by his regular calls with Signal’s chief researcher and one of the co-authors of articles on epibatidine, Georgy Nazarov.
Georgy Nazarov, chief researcher at Signal
Zavarzin, in a conversation with The Insider, denied that he called Danilova, although billings indicate that he did this more than once, as did the director of his Laboratory of High Technologies and Innovations, Svetlana Sadikova.
Igor Zavarzin
It is curious that, although Zavarzin denied knowing Danilova and working together with Babkin, he concluded his conversation with The Insider with the phrase: “You, as an experienced investigator, are sewing a case. It's all nonsense. There really is nothing like that and there never was. It's all a lie. You should be very ashamed that you are going to slander decent people.” How could he know that the people with whom he, according to him, did not know, were not involved in anything, and what exactly “did not actually happen,” he did not explain.
Georgy Nazarov, in a conversation with a journalist from The Insider, declined to comment.
General Director of ABCR Chemi Rus LLC Tatyana Danilova told The Insider that her company does not deal with NC Signal, insisted that she did not know Igor Babkin and that her company does not import triphenylphosphine to Russia, since this reagent is “under sanctions” (as of 2023 this is not the case), and then stopped the conversation.
Liliya Sabirova did not answer the call from The Insider journalist.
German management: we trust our partners, but we will close the Russian subsidiary
ABCR Chemi Rus is 90% owned by the German parent company abcr GmbH, and its managers Tatyana Danilova and Liliya Sabirova each have 5% shares. The director of the German company is Dr. Jan Hans Alfred Schuricht, the sole shareholder is abcr group GmbH.
Until March 17, on the website of the German company one could see an indication that its team included a Russian division; photographs of employees of the Russian ABCR Chemi Rus LLC were posted there. After The Insider's request and call to Germany, the site suddenly stopped working for a while, and a few days later, references to Russian employees disappeared from it.
ABCR team on the site before The Insider calls (Russian employees circled in red)
The director of the company's parent company, Jan Schuricht, told The Insider that they may be planning to close the Russian subsidiary.
He also claimed that he complied with all restrictions imposed by law and after 2018 did not supply anything to the Federal State Unitary Enterprise NC Signal. He said that their subsidiary ABCR Chemi Rus LLC supplies Abcr GmbH reagents to Russian universities. The German parent company is not obliged to carry out a full check on all clients of the subsidiary ABCR Chemi Rus LLC and does not influence the selection of its clients.
However, the compliance department of Abcr GmbH, according to him, conducts random (selective) checks in relation to all clients of ABCR Chemi Rus LLC to determine whether they were selected in accordance with embargo regulations. At the same time, abcr GmbH is not able to verify the “military activities” of Russian companies not sanctioned by the German authorities. They have not received dividends from their Russian subsidiary since 2020 and are generally considering the possibility of closing it.
Complete answer by Jan Schuricht
At The Insider's request, Jan Schuricht verified specific shipments from their warehouse in Germany of triphenylphosphine and 1.8-diazabicyclo[5.4.0]undec-7-ene that occurred in 2023. Jan Schuricht claims that these reagents were intended for the Ural Federal University.
The Insider has obtained invoices allegedly issued by ABCR Chemi Rus to URFU. These invoices bear all the signs of a forgery: there is no contract number (although the purchase should have been carried out under a government contract!), and there are no invoice numbers associated with this contract.
The Insider also obtained documents purporting to be contracts between ABCR Chemi Rus and URFU for the supply of these chemicals. However, they are crude fakes: they have no signatures of the parties, no details, no government procurement/government contract number.
In addition, The Insider obtained documents representing invoices issued to URFU, but also showing signs of falsification: at least one of them was issued a month earlier than the substance left the warehouse in Germany. Thus, the appearance of URFU in this story looks like an attempt to sweep under the rug the interaction of ABCR Chemi Rus LLC with NC Signal.
In addition, The Insider did not find any calls with employees of the Ural Federal University in the billings of ABCR Chemi Rus management. Finally, it is unclear how triphenylphosphine could be intended for URFU, if the general director of ABCR Danilova assured that they did not purchase this reagent at all, since it was “under sanctions.”
Schurikht also stated that, according to the colleagues with whom he spoke, there were no contacts between employees of the Russian company Sabirova and Kiselev with Babkin after 2018 (in reality, they are available in the billings in 2020–2024). In this regard, he stated that he could not explain the billings of Sabirova and Kiselev.
Telephone calls from employees of ABCR Chemi Rus and NC "Signal"
According to him, Danilova did not deny contacts with Zavarzin, saying that he is a well-known and respected scientist who purchases chemicals for his university (meaning, apparently, the Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences).
He also added that he continues to trust the employees of the Russian company:
“As the CEO of the parent company, I have to take them at their word first. Since I also know Lilia and Tatyana well, I have no doubt that they came to the center of attention in this sad story completely by accident.”
German lawyers interviewed by The Insider argue that if information that a research center produces and supplies poisons for political assassinations is public and the supplier, ignoring such information, continues to supply this research center with reagents, realizing that they can be used to create a crime weapon, this can be interpreted as complicity in a crime.
The Insider also contacted Alexey Kiselev from ABCR Chemi Rus, who was involved in customs clearance and had numerous calls with Babkin from Signal. Kiselev could not confirm or deny from memory the supply of the substances under discussion in 2023, and regarding Babkin from Signal, he said that they worked with Signal 8-10 years ago. He couldn’t immediately remember about cooperation with URFU.
The Insider sent German law enforcement agencies all available information about the cooperation of ABCR Chemie Rus with Russian producers of poisons for political assassinations.
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