Colonel General Eduard Chernovoltsev, the former head of the FSB’s science-and-tech service NTS, has been sent into retirement. Chernovoltsev oversaw the work of the FSB Forensic Science Institute (FSB NII-2), which developed the nerve agents used to poison the opposition leaders Alexey Navalny and Vladimir Kara-Murza, as well as the Russian writer Dmitry Bykov.
The news of Chernovoltsev’s forced retirement was published by The Insider. The Russian news outlet cited sources in the FSB, explaining that, although the general had reached retirement age, he would not have been obliged to leave his job if not for the leaks that exposed his agency’s role in the poisonings. According to one FSB insider,
just two years ago, Eduard Chernovoltsev swore to the country’s leadership that he would put an end to all leaks. But, given our leaky system, this is practically impossible.
Another source told The Insider that the general had been distressed about the Ukraine war, and “often said to his friends that things had gone way too far.”
Apart from NII-2, Chernovoltsev was in charge of the FSB’s Eighth Center for information protection, the Center for Special Technology, and the Directorate of Special Communications.
Earlier, the news of Chernovoltsev’s retirement was reported by RBC.
The politician Alexey Navalny was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok in August 2020. Investigative journalists were able to establish that FSB operatives from the Forensic Science Institute could have been behind the poisoning. They were Alexey Alexandrov, Ivan Osipov, Vladimir Panyaev, and Konstantin Kudryavtsev. The same people have been linked to the 2019 Novichok attack on Dmitry Bykov, and to the repeated attempts to poison the journalist and politician Vladimir Kara-Murza in 2015 and 2017.
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