A-234 is an organophosphatenerve agent. It was developed in the Soviet Union under the FOLIANT program and is one of the group of compounds referred to as Novichok agents that were revealed by Vil Mirzayanov. In March 2018 the Russian ambassador to the UK, Alexander Yakovenko, claimed to have been informed by British authorities that A-234 had been identified as the agent used in the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal. Vladimir Uglev, one of the inventors of the Novichok series of compounds, said he was "99 per cent sure that it was A-234" in relation to the 2018 Amesbury poisonings, noting its unusually high persistence in the environment. According to a classified report by the United States ArmyNational Ground Intelligence Center, the agent designated as A-232 and its ethyl analog A-234, developed under the FOLIANT program, "are as toxic as VX, as resistant to treatment as soman, and more difficult to detect and easier to manufacture than VX". Of the agent's binary versions, one is reportedly formed by acetonitrile and an organic phosphate "that can be disguised as a pesticide precursor," while for another, Bill Gertz wrote, "soldiers need only add alcohol". No certain data on toxicity exist but it is estimated that the median lethal concentration of A-234 is 7 mg/m3. This means that half of 70 kg men under slight physical activitybreathing 15 litres of air per minutewould die within two minutes of exposure. This equates to median lethal dose of 0.2 mg via respiration.
A-234 has recently been added to Schedule 1 of the Annex on Chemicals of the Chemical Weapons Convention and it has been explicitly named as an example compound for schedule 1.A.14. For chemicals listed in Schedule 1 the most stringent declaration and verification measures are in place combined with far-reaching limits and bans on production and use.
Alternative structure
An alternative structure for A-234 and the related Novichok agents has been put forward by Western chemical weapons experts such as Steven Hoenig and D. Hank Ellison. These structures are supported by Soviet literature of the time and were tested as acetylcholinesterase inhibitors, however Mirzayanov claims that a number of weaker agents developed as part of the Foliant program were published in the open literature as organophosphate pesticides, in order to disguise the secret nerve agent program as legitimate pesticide research.
