Operation Svarog

"Operation Svarog. Slavic god of fire, of course. He and Vostok are building a Soviet Firestorm."

- Martin Stein on Operation Svarog

Operation Svarog or Project Svarog was a Soviet scientific project, the goal of which was the creation of Soviet Firestorm. The project was possible thanks to the time-traveling shenanigans of Rip Hunter's team, which allowed Vandal Savage to catch wind on the information regarding the existence of Firestorm, which he relayed to Dr. Valentina Vostok.

Overview
Similar to the original F.I.R.E.S.T.O.R.M. project headed by Martin Stein, Operation Svarog depended on a thermocore, which, fused with a meta-human under specific conditions described in a formula by Professor Stein, would allow the participants of the experiment to turn into a conjoined meta-human, able to manipulate nuclear fire and transmute matter.

History
According to the Pentagon, the project was started by 1986, after Vandal Savage defected to the Soviet Union with the information regarding Firestorm, the actions of which he witnessed in 1975 when he met the time-traveling Rip Hunter's team. After researching Firestorm on his own, Savage relayed his findings to Dr. Valentina Vostok, who headed Project Svarog, intent on creating a Soviet Firestorm.

The project was eventually successful after Martin Stein himself was forced to explain the workings of Firestorm Matrix to Valentina Vostok with a formula that would allow to decelerate the subject's rate of fission and decrease core body temperature, stabilizing Firestorm. Conjoined as a meta-human, Martin Stein and Valentina Vostok turned into a Soviet Firestorm. Said Firestorm's life, however, was short lived, as the appearance of Jefferson Jackson at the Koshmar prison grounds allowed Professor Stein to break free of Valentina's control, leaving her to die in a nuclear explosion without the second Firestorm half.

Trivia

 * Martin Stein noted that the name of the project, Svarog, referred to an old Slavic god of fire.

Behind the scenes

 * In DC Comics when Soviet scientists tried to clone Firestorm (Ronnie Raymond) they created a soulless creature called Svarozhich ("Son of Svarog") instead. Svarozhich was stopped when Ronnie Raymond and Mikhail Arkadin absorbed it into the single Firestorm.
 * Svarog is a god of celestial fire and blacksmith craft in Slavic Pagan Mythology.