The scientist who leaked Russia's Novichok 'conspiracy'

Dissident Soviet scientist Vil Mirzayanov gained notoriety in the 1990s when he blew the cover on Moscow's secret experimentation with Novichok, the nerve gas used in the poisoning of a Russian ex-spy in Britain. Mirzayanov had worked for almost three decades in the Soviet Union at the State Scientific Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology. After he was fired in 1992, he and another scientist wrote a newspaper article revealing how the government had developed deadly chemical compounds known as Novichok -- or "newcomer" in English.