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On July 12, 2018, British scientists gathered at a restricted military base for a first look at the weapon used in a bizarre murder attempt a few weeks before. The device was a perfume bottle, tossed away by the assailants as they fled the country, and containing less than a tablespoon of a liquid so deadly that it could only be handled with heavy rubber gloves and hazmat gear. Investigators already suspected that the weapon was of Russian origin — the intended victim was a Russian ex-spy living in England, and the attackers were identified as military intelligence operatives from Moscow. The surprise, as the examination unfolded, was the sheer potency of the oily fluid inside the vial. It was enough poison, the scientists calculated, to wipe out a small town: the equivalent of thousands of lethal doses. This was Novichok, a powerful nerve agent invented by Russia. Just a year earlier, in 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin had declared to the world that his country no longer possessed such chemical weapons. U. S. and British intelligence officials believed at the time that Putin was lying, and here, in a laboratory in southern England, was tangible proof. Russia had secretly preserved at least some of its arsenal of poisons, and it clearly was willing to use them — including on foreign soil. Four years later, insights from the probe into the attempted assassination of defector Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England, are helping to fuel worries that Russian chemical weapons could soon turn up in yet another country, with far graver consequences. The Biden administration has repeatedly warned that Russia, frustrated with the faltering progress of its 3-week-old invasion of Ukraine, may be preparing to use chemical weapons against Ukrainian troops, political leaders or even ordinary civilians in an effort to regain momentum and seize control of key cities. While the nature of those preparations is not publicly known, current and former U. S. and NATO officials say Russia has long possessed an array of chemical weapons, which it retains in defiance of international treaties and despite years of Russian promises and pronouncements. Moreover, senior Russian leaders appear to regard chemical weapons as a legitimate tool for achieving a variety of goals, from eliminating political foes to subduing armed opponents, officials and weapons experts say. Russia denies possessing chemical weapons, and the Kremlin has accused Kyiv and Washington of plotting to use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine. The Russian embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.“The Skripal case was the smoking gun,” said Andrew C. Weber, a top nonproliferation official for the Pentagon during the Obama administration and an expert on Russia’s weapons of mass destruction programs. “Russia used chemical weapons, in peacetime, in a foreign country. The thought that they might now use chemical weapons in Ukraine is entirely rational.