GoKawiilSignal's official mandate involves detection research, which gives it a legitimate reason to maintain precisely the kind of analytical chemistry laboratory that both programs require. In the parlance of intelligence tradecraft, Signal provides a near-perfect cover story as a legitimate scientific facility doing real scientific work, all while maintaining classified annexes responsible for military applications: namely, poisoning enemies of Russia. As one source familiar with the arrangement told The Insider, the only operational rule is physical separation — "you don't want to mix urine and Novichok" — but the rest is redundant. The same scientists, equipment purchases, and institutional infrastructure can be, and are, shared.
The decision to relocate Russia's doping chemistry operation inside Signal was made, according to a source document analyzed by The Insider, at "the highest level," with a promise of "unlimited funding."
The trigger was Rodchenkov's defection in 2015 and the subsequent closure of the Moscow anti-doping laboratory. The FSB needed a new home for the program, one that was equal parts technically capable and plausibly deniable. Signal was both.
The man installed to run its doping laboratory was Victor Tarachenko, a chemical weapons specialist whom a prior Insider investigation connected to the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, England, in 2018. Tarachenko's phone records show him managing both the doping and poisoning portfolios in Signal under the same imprimatur: for the manufacture and deployment of nerve agents, he is in contact with chemists and delivery specialists; for the manufacture and utilization of anabolic steroids and the like, he runs the laboratory. The records make no distinction between the two roles because, structurally, there is none.
The operational template is identical across both programs, too.
In assassination operations, chemical weapons experts from the FSB's NII-2 Criminalistics Institute, which also falls under Bogdanov's purview, team up with surveillance operatives from the FSB's Constitutional Protection Directorate to trail targets, administer the substance, and then sanitize the scene using the FSB's own forensics service. In doping operations, Signal's chemists develop and refine substances, test them for detectability, and update formulations in an effort to stay ahead of WADA's protocols. Meanwhile, directorate operatives embedded in sports federations handle delivery and cover.
Having Kovalev, an undercover FSB officer masquerading as a forensic expert, didn't do much to save RUSADA from humiliation. Russia, the Court ruled, would be banned from all global sporting events, albeit for a shorter time period than the one WADA sought (two years instead of four) and with select Russian nationals permitted to compete as individual neutral athletes absent a national banner. Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 caused the International Olympic Committee to ban Russia from subsequent Games in Beijing and Paris until its formal reinstatement in last month's Paralympic Games in Italy, possibly paving the way for its participation in the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.