PRAGUE, June 1. /TASS/. The Czech president’s office has published a non-classified section of a report by the Czech military intelligence, to which President Milos Zeman referred when he spoke of production and testing of the Novichok nerve agent in his country.
"The president of the republic was informed by the military intelligence about the project during which the Military Research Institute produced several milligrams of mixture, containing the A-320 substance, codenamed ‘Novichok.’ After the tests, the sample was destroyed," the Prague Castle press service said.
According to the report, the sample produced in the Czech Republic was different from the Novichok-class nerve agent that was used during the Salisbury incident this March.
"It should be stressed that Czech Republic has nothing in common with the nerve gas poisoning incident in Salisbury," the presidential press service said.
On May 3, President Zeman said on Prague’s television channel Barrandow that a small amount of Novichok had been produced and tested in November 2017 in the Czech Republic’s Military Research Institute in Brno.
On March 4, former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal, 66, who had been earlier sentenced in Russia for spying for the UK, and his daughter Yulia, 33, were found unconscious on a bench near the Maltings shopping center in Salisbury, UK. Police said they had been exposed to a nerve agent.
Later, London claimed that the toxin of Novichok-class had been allegedly developed in Russia. With that, the UK rushed to accuse Russia of being involved, while failing to produce any evidence. Moscow refuted the accusations that it had participated in the incident and points out that neither the Soviet Union nor Russia have ever done research into that toxic chemical.