Drug used in Moscow siege operation traced to Lithuania

Lithuanian newspaper Lietuvos Rytas has written that the potent synthetic drug, fentanyl, the main component of the gas used in October's hostage-freeing operation in Moscow, was produced for the Soviet army in Lithuania between 1970 and 1987. According to the article, in 1993 or 1994, production of fentanyl was briefly resumed in independent Lithuania under a secret order from the health minister but it is unclear where this 100,000-ampoule batch was sent. The following is an excerpt from the article published on 28 December; subheadings have been inserted editorially:

People in many countries, including Lithuania, have identified the October hostage drama in Moscow as the most important event in 2002...

Innocent people died or were disabled by the gas used by Russia's crack forces - chemicals containing fentanyl.

If a public investigation into the fentanyl case is ever launched in Russia, its trail should undoubtedly lead to Kaunas [Lithuania's second-largest city], where the Sanitas experimental pharmaceutical plant produced millions of fentanyl ampoules between 1970 and 1987. This super-secret preparation was invented in Soviet Latvia and was first produced in Lithuania...

When I again crossed the threshold of house No 3 on Vytauto Avenue in Kaunas after 16 years, I immediately noticed the changes that had taken place.

Sanitas is a chemical laboratory established in 1922. It was turned into an experimental plant in the Soviet era and used to manufacture secret products to the orders of the thirteenth board of the Soviet Union's KGB security service and the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) of the Soviet Defence Ministry's General Staff.

Back then, not only journalists, but also some less reliable members of Sanitas's own staff used to be prohibited from entering certain laboratory facilities.

In the early 1980s, when Sanitas became an experimental plant, it started producing some components of the Soviet psychotropic armament.

Today, Sanitas is a private company that makes marigold ointments, hawthorn extractions, camphor spirit, tinctures of valerian and other products that resemble the range of goods made by a minor pre-WWII chemist.

When he saw a journalist at the plant, one of Sanitas's veterans,
said: "We had anticipated that someone would visit us some day... (newspaper ellipsis) When the news about the fentanyl attack in Moscow spread, we started wondering whether anybody would ever learn that it all really started in Kaunas," he said.

The production director of Sanitas plc, Giedrius Gudas, brought us a folder containing several hundred pages from the company's archive. Its worn cover bore the title, written in large letters - "fentanyl"...

The file contains all the available material on this preparation which killed 129 people when it was used by Russia's secret forces.

Fentanyl was invented at the organic synthesis institute of Soviet Latvia's Academy of Sciences in Riga, which was located at the 12th laboratory on Aizkrastes Street. The copyright to the drug was held by one [Mr] Lavrinovich. Meanwhile, [Mrs] Germane researched this preparation in trials with animals at the pharmacology laboratory of the same institute.

Was it an original Soviet preparation or had it been stolen from some lab in the West by KGB or GRU agents?

The "third-party individuals" sent by US military attaches to be near the Moscow theatre round the clock during the hostage crisis told journalists, in confidence, a few hours after the spetsnaz [Russian special forces] operation that they were very familiar with fentanyl which was used in the attack.

Although the inventors of fentanyl, Lavrinovich and Germane, said the drug did not affect either the liver, kidneys, heart or bone tissues even if used on a daily basis, experience gained in Kaunas proved these assumptions wrong.

In adequate dosages, fentanyl has an effect that is six times faster and shorter than that of morphine.

Given the fact that it is between 80 and 100 times more potent than morphine, it is easy to understand that this preparation may be compared to a pharmacological bomb.

The first batch of fentanyl, 8,500 ampoules, was made at Sanitas in 1970. The plant used to use citric acid to dilute fentanyl solutions brought from Riga. The ampoules used to contain a 0.005-per-cent fentanyl solution.

Since fentanyl was able to subdue the pain of traumatic and neurological shock quickly, the Soviet army became its main consumer. In the heat of the war in Afghanistan, in 1984 and 1985, Sanitas turned out as many as 10m ampoules of fentanyl annually.

As Sanitas veterans told us, the production of fentanyl had caused some problems. In spite of security measures, the drug, known as "fentas" among Kaunas youth at the time, made it onto the narcotics black market.

In May 1986, the author of this journalistic investigation started gathering material on how fentanyl was sowing death in Kaunas.

The addicts included underworld elite representatives, young artists and well-known sportsmen as well as the children of the Soviet party nomenklatura.

However, the article about fentanyl never made it to press. In order to preserve the reputation of their families, Communist Party officials took action to make sure that the Soviet censorship body, Glavlit, banned this article.

Revisiting paths I trod 16 years ago, I can state sadly that not a single addict of "fentas" is still alive, not excluding the offspring of party officials or the directors of the largest food stores [prestigious jobs in the Soviet era]. All the distributors of "fentas" - mostly teenagers between 14 and 16 who had formed a secret "fentas" distribution ring that worked impeccably in Kaunas and beyond - are also dead now.

Nevertheless [despite banning the article], a nervous period began in Sanitas after that, as commissions from Moscow and Vilnius started taking turns to visit the plant. They used to come from various institutions, starting with party establishments and ending with the secret services. There turned out to be some "fentas" addicts even among Sanitas's own staff.

Some veterans of Sanitas who were closely involved in the production of fentanyl have refused to talk about it to a journalist even now. They said the topic of fentanyl evoked unpleasant memories.

Eventually, in September 1987, the Soviet ministry for the production of medical biological preparations moved fentanyl production from Kaunas to some plant in Belarus.

It is believed that the production of fentanyl gas in military plants in Belarus, Siberia and Central Asia could have begun at that time.

However, Sanitas's employees said that the spectre of "fentas" resurfaced briefly in Lithuania after the restoration of independence.

They said that the health minister had issued a secret decree in 1993 or 1994, instructing the plant to produce 100,000 ampoules of fentanyl. The decree was based on an allegation that Lithuania's hospitals had run out of anaesthetics and doctors allegedly had to use even alcohol as a painkiller.

Despite a hiatus of several years, Sanitas managed to carry out this task quickly and produced a high-quality batch of fentanyl.

The author of this journalistic investigation has interviewed anaesthetists from several Kaunas hospitals and they were simply shocked when they heard this information. They said they had never had to use alcohol as a painkiller, not even in the spring of 1990, when the Soviet Union imposed an economic blockade on Lithuania.

Who in the Lithuanian Health Ministry felt the sudden urge to produce the world's most potent synthetic drug? Who personally blessed this order?

According to approximate estimates, such a large number of ampoules containing drugs would be worth several million dollars on the narcotics market in the West.

Or maybe someone in the East recalled the high-quality products of Sanitas and wanted to acquire "component X" to produce "special measures" [gas used in the Moscow hostage-freeing operation]?

My understanding is that fentanyl lolipops are given to children who are victims of cancer in this country. Evidently when used properly they are useful and "safe". If you're dying of painful cancer, fentanyl might be a good choice.

The other option is large doses of demerol.

--Boris

Fentanyl is a widely used pain killer. It is also one of the most used drugs for abuse among physicians and anesthesiologists as it is hard to pick up on drug screens. Impaired physicians are more numerous than you think.

The deaths in the Russian hostage situation were from high levels of Fentanyl mist pumped in the rooms and the poor condition of most of the people there after several days of no food or water, plus inadequate post rescue medical care.

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