Vladimir Uglev

Vladimir Uglev was born on 20 September 1946 in Kirovsk, Murmansk Oblast, according to The Insider. BBC Russian reported that he grew up in a camp settlement in nearby Apatity after relatives were exiled as kulaks from a village connected with the name Ugli. His father worked as a mining technician and camp brigade leader. At fourteen he received the popular-science book The World Through the Eyes of a Scientist, which he credited with turning him toward chemistry. He said he never loved Soviet power, given his family's repression, yet joined the Komsomol to enter higher education. He later served in the border troops.

Uglev graduated in 1975 from the D. Mendeleev Moscow Institute of Chemical Technology (today Mendeleev University) with a degree in the chemistry and technology of biologically active substances. He accepted a posting that offered housing and Ministry of Defence support at the Volsk branch of GosNIIOKhT rather than remain in Moscow without a propiska.

From 1975 to 1990 Uglev was a senior researcher at the Volsk branch of GosNIIOKhT in the Saratov region, working within Pyotr Kirpichev's group on new organophosphorus nerve agents under the Foliant programme. In later interviews he described synthesizing agents in that family in the mid-1970s and storing laboratory samples under strict controls. He left classified work by the early 1990s (The Bell noted he left the institute in 1994). In 1992-93 he supported Vil Mirzayanov publicly after Mirzayanov's article on undeclared agents. Through the 1990s he sold consumer goods at markets, then lived in Balakovo as an environmental activist. Around 2018 he moved to Anapa and became a chemical technologist at Tsarskie Kraski Zhivitsa, designing paint and wax formulations. After Salisbury and Navalny he advised The Insider and other investigative outlets.

Uglev's name reached a global audience in 2018 when he told The Bell, the BBC and other outlets that the Soviet Union had developed a family of nerve agents now called Novichok, that he had worked on them, and that the Salisbury poisoning looked like a Russian state-level operation. He credited Kirpichev as the scientific founder of the series and rejected Kremlin claims that no such programme existed. In 2020 he commented again after Navalny's poisoning and helped journalists map production and use. He insisted he never published chemical formulas. Christo Grozev summarised him as an outspoken critic of civilian targeting who contradicted official denials in both the Skripal and Navalny cases.

BBC Russian reported that Uglev's third wife was Taisiya Petrovna, a commodity specialist who loved Anapa's seafront and pushed the couple's move from Balakovo. They lived in a one-room mortgaged flat on the edge of Anapa. He had two sons: Alexander, who lived in the United States, and Dmitry; both declined to speak to BBC Russian about their father in 2019. Colleagues in Shikhany remembered him as sociable in a white lab coat; Balakovo journalists called him frank to the point of being a local freak, always signing comments under his own name. In Anapa his employer Alexei Strashko kept him on after harassment leaflets appeared.

Uglev argued that Russian society, not only one leader, bore responsibility for state violence. On Salisbury he said proof of a specific tube might never appear, yet the logic of events and the speed of official denials pointed to Russia. He compared denials to a thief shouting that the thief was elsewhere. He expressed conscience over training-ground and laboratory victims of agents his group had made. After harassment he said everyone feels fear but must control it. He regretted not emigrating when Mirzayanov did, yet refused to "sit on his son's neck" in America.

Historians and investigators treat Uglev as a primary living source on the Foliant-era agents later labelled Novichok. His 2018-2020 interviews undercut official Russian claims that no such weapons were developed, and his advice aided The Insider/Bellingcat reporting on production and assassination units. Together with Mirzayanov he shaped public understanding that helped OPCW schedule Novichok-related chemicals. His later years also illustrate the cost of speaking from inside Russia: leaflets, a police call, a road accident, and continued work in a small Anapa paint lab.

Major interviews include The Bell (March 2018, with Svetlana Reiter and Natalia Gevorkyan), BBC Steve Rosenberg's "The man who made Novichok" (April 2018), Sky News, Current Time / Radio Free Europe video interviews, Franceinfo / Complement d'enquete, Feigin Live, Dozhd, and Forum of Free Russia discussions after Navalny's poisoning. AFP and euronews carried clips of him describing effects and warning that Novichok kills. VICE News profiled him for HBO. Death notices ran at The Insider, Meduza, RFE/RL, NY Post and Daily Beast in early November 2026.

The Insider reported that Vladimir Uglev died on 26 October 2026 at age 80 and that he had been living in Anapa. Meduza and other outlets relayed the news on 3 November 2026. The cause of death was not made public, nor was any reason given for announcing the death more than a week later. At the time of this memorial there was no English or Russian Wikipedia article and no Wikidata item under his name.