Eurasia Press & News
The FSB’s Second Service is known for its program of poisoning and assassinating Russian opposition figures. But, as The Insider has discovered, the very same unit that poisoned Navalny and monitored Boris Nemtsov has been responsible for the state-run doping program in Russian sports for the past several years. The doping itself is produced by the same Signal Center that synthesized Novichok and epibatidine.
The FSB between poisons and doping
In November 2020, Dmitry Kovalev, a forensic expert with the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA), testified before the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne. His testimony (via videoconference due to the COVID-19 pandemic) was intended to convince the commission of the unlawfulness of the four-year ban imposed by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) on Russia’s participation in most international sporting competitions, including the Olympic Games.
The Russian state-run doping program for athletes and the Russian Anti-Doping Agency’s falsification of test results came to light after Grigory Rodchenkov, the director of the Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory and analytical chemist, left for the United States in November 2015 and gave a detailed testimony. Two and a half months later, in February 2016, two other RUSADA executives, Vyacheslav Sinev and Nikita Kamaev, died in Moscow under unclear circumstances within 10 days of each other (Rodchenkov is certain that both were murdered).
Rodchenkov’s testimony was very detailed, full of specific, unpleasant details. For example, according to Rodchenkov, during the 2014 Sochi Games, he supplied dozens of Russian athletes with the “Duchess” cocktail, a mixture of three banned substances, through the Ministry of Sport. Many of the athletes won medals while escaping detection thanks to a “special method” of doping tests. FSB officers systematically swapped urine samples with clean ones through a secret hole in the wall of the doping lab in Sochi, using a special technique to open bottles containing samples that were considered tamper-proof, and then carefully resealed them (for more details, see ” The Order of the Urine Bearers “).
Rodchenkov’s information formed the basis of the damning McLaren report, and the investigation resulted in Russia facing a four-year ban from competition—the very issue before the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne. In January 2019, WADA received 23 terabytes of data from Russia’s Moscow laboratory, but this data revealed that someone had edited the records just weeks before the transfer: removing positive doping test results, destroying files containing raw data, and posting fabricated messages to shift the blame onto Rodchenkov.
The official Russian position was that Rodchenkov himself had falsified data to make false accusations against the Russian authorities. In Lausanne, Kovalev, as a witness on behalf of the Russian Investigative Committee, pushed the same line: there was no state-sponsored doping program, and all the fabrications had been orchestrated by Rodchenkov himself (Kovalev didn’t even attempt to explain how Rodchenkov could have falsified anything after emigrating to the United States). It’s unlikely he seriously expected success, as even before the trial, Kovalev had already testified before the WADA commission, which found his testimony unreliable and “evasive.” When, at the trial, a WADA lawyer accused him of complicity in falsifying evidence, Kovalev laughed.
The lawyer likely had no idea how right he was. The fact is, as The Insider discovered, Kovalev wasn’t just a “RUSADA expert,” but a colonel in the FSB’s Second Service—the same one that swapped athletes’ doping samples through a hole in the wall. The Second Service is widely known for orchestrating political assassinations and poisonings. Among other things, officers from the Second Service poisoned Alexei Navalny, Dmitry Bykov, and Vladimir Kara-Murza with Novichok, and also followed Boris Nemtsov in the weeks leading up to his assassination.
The Second Service carried out their murders and poisonings in collaboration with officers from the Center for Special Technologies (FSB Research Institute 2), where Major General Vladimir Bogdanov is a key figure. Judging by Bogdanov’s phone records, during the same summer days of 2020 when he coordinated Navalny’s poisoning, Kovalev was also in constant contact with him, apparently reporting on his testimony in Lausanne.
It’s clear why the poisoners needed NII-2; it housed FSB poisons experts. But why did Kovalev need it? It’s simple: the same Scientific Center Signal (formally subordinate to the Federal Service for Technical and Export Control, but de facto under Bogdanov’s operational control), which produced Novichok and epibatidine for the Navalny poisonings, had also been producing doping for athletes since 2015.
A source familiar with the center’s inner workings told The Insider that although the poison synthesis and doping production were unrelated programs, the same scientists may be involved in all of the center’s projects, using the same equipment. According to a document from the source reviewed by The Insider , the decision to move the doping project to the Signal Scientific Center was made “at the highest level” with the promise of “unlimited funding.” The reason for this was Rodchenkov’s defection in 2015 and the subsequent closure of the Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory. The FSB program needed a new facility—one that was both technically advanced and discreet. The Signal Scientific Center met both requirements.
“The same scientists, using the same equipment, were involved in synthesizing poisons for opposition members and producing doping for athletes.”
Viktor Taranchenko, a chemical weapons specialist identified by The Insider during the Skripal poisoning investigation, was appointed head of the doping lab . According to invoices, Taranchenko was involved in both poisons and doping: he maintains contacts with chemists and suppliers of raw materials for the production of nerve agents, and also manages a laboratory producing anabolic steroids and similar compounds.
As part of the doping program, chemists at the Signal Scientific Center develop and refine compounds, test them for detectability, and update formulas to comply with WADA protocols. Meanwhile, Second Service agents, embedded in sports federations, are engaged in doping delivery and concealment of evidence.
The presence of Kovalev, an FSB officer posing as a forensic scientist, did not save RUSADA from humiliation. A court ruling banned Russia from all global sporting events, albeit for a shorter period than WADA had sought (two years instead of four). Only individual Russian citizens were allowed to participate as neutral athletes without a national flag. Following the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the International Olympic Committee banned Russia from participating in subsequent Games in Beijing and Paris. However, its official reinstatement to the Paralympic Games in Italy last month could pave the way for Russian participation in the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
Family business
Kovalev also had personal motives for justifying the Russian doping program: he is the common-law husband of Veronika Loginova, the new director general of RUSADA, whom an anonymous WADA whistleblower, according to The New York Times, accused of “directly participating in an attempt to cover up doping testing results at the 2014 Winter Games.” An environmental engineer by training, Loginova previously worked as a RUSADA expert, whose responsibilities included participating in WADA’s anti-doping education program in Sochi in 2014. At the time, Russia reported no doping cases among its athletes.
Loginova subsequently headed the Anti-Doping Department of the Ministry of Sport, and in December 2021, she returned to RUSADA: she was appointed Director General under WADA’s supervision following the removal of her reformist predecessor, Yuri Ganus. Speaking at international forums in her new position, she called RUSADA “an example for other anti-doping organizations” and advocated for reform of the global anti-doping agency under the leadership of UNESCO.
According to flight database data, Loginova regularly travels with her common-law husband, who works for the FSB. For example, a booking for August 2023 shows three related tickets for the Kaliningrad-Moscow route: Loginova, her daughter Valeria, and Kovalev. A similar pattern is observed on many domestic flights between 2022 and 2024.
Athletes in civilian clothes
Kovalev is just one of many examples of FSB Second Service employees directly involved in the doping program. Apparently, an entire department within the Directorate for the Protection of the Constitutional System (DPS) was responsible for this activity. In any case, Kovalev’s phone records list him as “Dima Kovalev, Department 8,” while his frequent travel companion and colleague from the Second Service, Andrei Fedorov, is listed as “Andrei Doping, Department 8.”
The calls from FSB agent “Andrey-Doping” are filled with athletes: Denis Tikhomirov, head coach of the Russian national snowboarding team; Maria Pyanova, head coach of the CSKA swimming school; Stanislav Shevchenko, president of the All-Russian Volleyball Federation; Vladislav Norkin, head coach of the CSKA youth basketball team; Kirill Sukharev, medalist at the European Championships in long jump, and others.
The unimpeded work of FSB doping specialists is ensured by employees of the Second Service, who are officially part of the Russian Olympic Committee’s leadership. For example, Nikolai Varfolomeev, an employee of the Second Service, is the chairman’s security advisor, and from 2022 to 2024, Rodion Plitukhin, who began his career in the FSB’s Second Service, even held the post of Secretary General of the ROC.
“The doping hysteria is a figment of the imagination of Western structures!”
Having failed to convince Swiss investigators in person in 2020, Kovalev posted his arguments online.
After the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled that Russia had engaged in “deliberate, sophisticated, and brazen” manipulation of doping data, a series of messages (later deleted) appeared on a Russian Telegram channel called “Naked Sport,” where Kovalev frequently posted comments. They outlined, in technical detail, the theory that whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov extorted money from athletes in exchange for concealing their positive test results. The Lausanne Commission had previously dismissed this claim as fabricated, as it relied on database entries falsified by the Russian side.
“The hysteria about ‘terrible Russian doped athletes’ and other such nonsense is a figment of the old imaginations of every single Western sports organization. This is despite the fact that Russia isn’t among the leaders in terms of detected cases. The old tales of Rodchenkov and other ‘truth-tellers’ from ‘our side’ who have joined him, including those who fled abroad out of fear, continue to provide the groundwork for attempts by incompetent pseudo-lawyers and fraudsters to make money off of unfortunate athletes. That’s why Rusada’s current activities are a source of concern for these dishonest, to put it mildly, gentlemen and their female companions, some of whom, in the past (2013-2016), weren’t shy about taking money from athletes to “resolve issues” with supposed “acquittals” in sports arbitration courts, and weren’t above blackmailing and so on individual successful female athletes, etc. If I were the author of this article, I’d have to think about what’s next. The years are ticking by, and there’s no room left in life. Cheap hype aimed at the Mitkovs, Patsevs, and Co. no longer excites anyone.” (Spelling and punctuation preserved. — The Insider.)
Meanwhile, in December 2025, Loginova attended the annual WADA conference in Busan, South Korea, marking RUSADA’s first official appearance at the forum in many years. She presented proposals to bring Russian legislation into compliance with the WADA Code. The Russian sports bureaucracy, along with the FSB’s Second Service, are ready for Russia’s return to professional sports.
