Just four years after the creation of the Zagorsk facility, the CPSU and the USSR Council of Ministers issued a decree "for strengthening scientific-research work in the field of microbiology and virology". [14], By 1939, with the USSR on a war footing, the Soviet leadership is reported to have believed that the "imperialistic and fascistic countries" had actively undertaken BW preparations and that the use of such weapons, in case of emergency, was a foregone conclusion. Whatever their expectations, it is beyond doubt that the Russian government has succeeded in generating a global media frenzy of speculative commentary on the supposed existence of bioweapons labs in Ukraine despite the fact that the documents they have pointed to as evidence offer no support for the allegations. She also pointed out that she receives no U.S. funding for her research on genomic sequencing. [citation needed]. In the 1990s, Boris Yeltsin admitted to an offensive biological weapons program as well as to the true nature of the Sverdlovsk biological weapons accident of 1979, which had resulted in the deaths of at least 64 people. Those records were obtained and made public by a former head of Georgian intelligence living in exile in Russia, Igor Giorgadze. ?? Russian bioweapons program from 1920s to 1990s, List of Soviet/Russian biological weapons institutions, programs and projects, Notable biological agent outbreaks and accidents, Leitenberg, M., Zilinskas, R., & Kuhn, J. WASHINGTON (AP) The Biden administration publicly warned Wednesday that Russia might seek to use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine as the White House rejected Russian claims of illegal chemical weapons development in the country it has invaded. In 1998, Alibek reported that "there was significant discussion of the possible use of monkeypox as a biological weapon instead of smallpox. No Hyperbola! No. But Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, the Russian defense ministry spokesperson, told the state news agency that the attempt to secure the labs was itself evidence that Ukrainian and American scientists had been secretly plotting to weaponize dangerous pathogens. The ambassador endorsed a discredited conspiracy theory that the photographs had been staged. Russian officials, and state-controlled Russian television, repeated the allegations again and again throughout 2018. [25] This triggered George H. W. Bush and Margaret Thatcher to pressure Gorbachev into opening for inspection several of his facilities. That quickly made it a priority for the U.S. to help secure dangerous pathogens, particularly in some of the impoverished former Soviet states where anthrax is naturally occurring but had also been used in biological weapons experiments before the collapse of the USSR in 1991. The Fox host, whose commentaries have become a staple of Russian state TV, also claimed, wrongly, that Nuland had all but said that theres a military application to this research, that they were working on bioweapons. Carlson then took the bait offered by the Russian militarys reference to coronavirus to make the wild claim that the mundane public health research in Ukraine was identical to dangerous experiments on bat coronaviruses in Wuhan, China, funded by the U.S. before the Covid-19 pandemic. The U.S. is planning a provocation in Ukraine by using banned toxic chemicals and blaming it on Moscow, Russian Lieutenant-General Igor Kirillov, chief of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defense Forces of the Russian Armed Forces, said on Tuesday. It was transferred to the control of the USSR Ministry of Defence in March 1954. Written by Tuan Nguyen, Contributor on April 8, 2012. [2], "Pokrov, Berdsk and Omutninsk all revealed evidence of biological activity since 1975, such as large-scale production in hardened facilities, aerosol test chambers, excessive containment levels for current activity and accommodation for weapons-filling lines."[4]. The existence of these chimeric viruses programmes was one reason why Alibek defected to the United States in 1992. Two special ships and two aircraft were assigned to Khatanever for use in tests focused on the dissemination of tularaemia bacteria. But a closer look at the records from the lab in Georgia reveals that there was nothing suspicious about the deaths reported in 2015, as Russian officials had claimed. This program focused on anti-crop and anti-livestock biological weapons, with Soviet efforts starting with FMD virus, for which an institute was established on Gorodomlya Island. In April 1979, a mysterious biological weapon escaped from a lab in the Soviet Union, killing at least 66 people and an unknown number of animals in what is now central Russia. Another innovation was the "mobilization production facilities"ostensibly civil manufacturing plantswhich incorporated capacity for production of weapons in wartime emergency." [28] Soviet defectors, including Colonel Kanatjan Alibekov, the first deputy chief of Biopreparat from 1988 to 1992, confirmed that the program had been massive and that it still existed. Russia called the meeting of the 15-member U.N. Security Council to reassert through its envoy Vassily Nebenzia, without providing evidence, that Ukraine ran biological weapons laboratories with U . In a phone call this week, Favorov told me that he suspects some of the Russian militarys wild ideas about what is happening in U.S.-funded labs in former Soviet countries is likely projection. Those documents were orders from Ukraines health minister, issued on the second day of the Russian invasion, directing labs in two cities, Kharkiv and Poltava, to destroy collections of bacterial pathogens used for research. What if these labs are creating viruses just like COVID-19?. After seeing the results of international investigations into chemical weapons use in Syria, Russia introduced a resolution to the United Nations last month that would have undermined future independent . Russia's willingness to use weapons of mass destruction There is no doubt that Russia has a long history of producing chemical and biological weapons. Spearheaded by the Vector State Research Centre of. Ukraines ambassador to the world body, Sergiy Kyslytsya, called the idea being advanced by Russia a bunch of insane delirium. The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed on Thursday that the US undertook a secret biological weapons testing program in Georgia, killing at least 73 people. The list contains only strains common to microbiological and even more so to epidemiological laboratories.. [13] SIS identifies Petr Petrovich Maslakovets and Semen Ivanovich Zlatogorov as the lead BW scientists working on Yersinia pestis (the causative organism of plague) and other dangerous pathogens. As part of their work the labs do seem to hold dangerous pathogens. So what is the dispute all about, and what is actually happening inside Ukraine? Let me explain with a simple example, he said. In fact, US funding to the laboratories had its roots in the fall of the Soviet Union, after which money was pumped into Ukraine and other countries to help them transfer scientific skills away from weapons towards public health. Cook, Michelle Stem and Amy F. Woolf (April 10, 2002). Russia has claimed without any evidence that biological weapons are being developed in laboratories in Ukraine with support from the United States. Correction: March 21, 2022 It has also shown a willingness to. In that case too, documents supposedly proving the allegations were published in the state media records from the lab which showed that dozens of Georgians had died in 2015 while taking the American-made drug Sovaldi. This week, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria . ATLANTA, GA. (THECOUNT) Forget the current worldwide pandemic, according to CDC, there may also be a zombie apocalypse coming in 2021. Running parallel to the work underway at Vlasikha, BW research was also being pursued in an institution controlled by the state security apparatus. Thomas-Greenfield said: I will say this once: Ukraine does not have a biological weapons program. She went on to turn the accusation back on Moscow. German intelligence independently identified the secret BW programme allegedly managed by Zlatogorov and Maslakovets. Such was the rapidity and depth of penetration of the attack that, by September, the Red Army's BW facility - the Sanitary Technical Institute (STI) - on Gorodomlya Island, was under immediate threat of capture. The issue of compliance by Russia with the BWC has been of concern for many years". Nakamitsu pointed to the Biological Weapons Convention, which has prohibited the development and use of biological weapons since 1975. His American counterpart, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, warned that Russias claim could be a pretext for launching its own biological weapons attack on Ukraine. The article claims that Nostradamus, also known as Michel de Nostradame, predicted a Russian scientist would create a biological weapon and produce a virus that would turn humans into. Counter-proliferation efforts of the Nunn-Lugar Biological Threat Reduction program successfully averted technology transfer to authoritarian neighbors such as Iran during the decade following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union conducted experimentations with the Marburg virus in aerosol form to transform it into a strategic-operational biological weapon. [26], The NunnLugar Cooperative Threat Reduction aimed to secure and dismantle weapons of mass destruction, including the Soviet biological weapons program. Nostradamus, a locked-in member of the "seer" Mount Rushmore, predicted that a zombie apocalypse will occur in 2021 after a Russian scientist creates a biological weapon that produces a. #??????? 12 Mar 2022. Because it upsets so many people that I talk to constantly, I have introduced a bill to stop taxpayer funding for bioweapons, Greene said. I hope that this is more of a disinformation talking point than an actual thing, Gronvall said. The program reportedly includes institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences from Pushchino. Here's what he said: "Few young people: halfdead to give a start. In the early 1950s the Soviet leadership became concerned that the USSR was vulnerable to attack by a new generation of virus-based biological weapons. On the House floor, Greene repeated the claims that have jumped from Russian state media to Infowars to Fox News as she introduced the Stopping the Spread of Taxpayer-Funded Bioweapon Act., Greene talks about Biolabs in Ukraine and announces her bill to prevent US taxpayer funding for Bioweapons pic.twitter.com/IJZDb9Tsop, Greene argued that her legislation was necessary because, in her words, there are reports of possibly deadly pathogens escaping these biolabs in places like Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakhstan that is [sic] responsible for killing people. She did not mention that those reports were from Russian state media, quoting claims Russian officials made based on faulty evidence. A state lab in Russia's Siberia is beginning research into prehistoric viruses preserved in the remains of animals found in melting permafrost. Ukraine has biological research facilities, she said, adding that there was concern that Russian forces were trying to gain control of the labs. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, "biological weapons, also called germ weapons, are any number of disease-producing agents, such as bacteria, viruses, rickettsiae, fungi, toxins, or other biological agents, that may be utilized as weapons against humans, animals, or plants." 1 Throughout history, pathogens have proven to be the most Hes already used chemical weapons in the past, and we should be careful of whats about to come. In the summer of 1936, Ivan Mikhailovich Velikanov led the Red Army's first expedition to conduct tests of biological weapons on Vozrozhdeniya Island. The new strain, called "Variant U", had been successfully weaponized and approved by the Soviet Ministry of Defense in 1990.[12]. It says material is being destroyed to conceal . ??????????? Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the head of the Russian militarys radiation, chemical and biological protection force, described documents on recent biological research in Ukraine at a briefing in Moscow on Thursday. The Russian permanent representative to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, delivered a lengthy account of the alleged biological weapons plot, and said the birds, bats and insects supposedly intended. Russian officials have repeatedly invoked the fact that the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 on the false pretext that the country had weapons of mass destruction including mobile biological research laboratories as a reason to distrust the Americans now. The death records, Kirillov claimed, gave Russian experts, reason to believe that a highly toxic chemical drug or a highly lethal biological agent was [administered] under the guise of medical treatment at the U.S.-funded Lugar Research Center in Tbilisi. It is therefore apparent that previous perceptions by Western scholars of the Khrushchev era as contributing little to the development of the Soviet Union's biological warfare capabilities are incorrect. Here they aimed to develop strains of plague that remained viable when loaded into artillery shells, aerial bombs and other means of dispersal. The anti-corruption activist Alexey Navalny survived an attempted assassination with the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok in Russia in 2020. Carlsons claims about what Nuland said were quickly translated into Russian by the state broadcaster in Moscow and shared on Twitter by Russian diplomats. ? At some point around the 25 September, the facility was evacuated and the buildings partially destroyed. Putin comments on US-led biolabs in Ukraine pic.twitter.com/oqO4WDDxSr. The biolab narrative "exploded on social media right . The UN security council met on Friday to discuss Moscows claims the US is funding military biological activities in Ukraine. [1] [2] Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya held up images of pregnant women injured by Russian shelling of a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine. A report from 2018 on Russian state television claimed that a U.S.-funded lab in the former Soviet republic of Georgia was cover for biological weapons research. The discussion came amid Russia's ongoing military invasion of Ukraine, which began on February 24. The secret program was code-named "Ecology". ??????????? Five people died from inhaling anthrax and 17 others were infected after exposure in the following months, as envelopes stuffed with spores were mailed to U.S. officials and journalists. Updated: 15:41, 28 Dec 2020 EXPERTS fear Russian scientists are experimenting with the deadly Ebola virus as part of a terrifying "Doomsday" chemical weapons project. On Monday, Biden said Russia was also suggesting that Ukraine has biological and chemical weapons in Ukraine Thats a clear sign he is considering using both of those. Who would hold party elites accountable to the values they proclaim to have? However, General Otoz Yamada, Commander of the Kwantung Army had already ordered the destruction and evacuation of these facilities. Fears are growing Vladimir Put The principal architect of the Soviet Union's first military biological programme was Yakov Moiseevich Fishman[ru]. In May 1941, a number of measures codenamed Yurta were implemented to counter the perceived threat of biological sabotage by the German and Japanese intelligence services. However, the officers, doctors and other personnel from Unit 731 were in fact transferred to the comparative comfort of the NKVD special prison camp No. Fox News ??????? The nerve agent is classified as a chemical weapon, not a biological weapon, by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, presentation of faulty intelligence on Iraqs suspected weapons of mass destruction. The Russian ambassador to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, evoked the specter of an uncontrolled spread of bio agents from Ukraine. From the 1970s, it focused on molecular biology and the development of genetically modified organisms. Project Factor was the codename for the budget to develop microbial weapons with new properties of high virulence, improved stability, and new clinical syndromes. Russian authorities said that no biological material was present in the lab at the time of the explosion. A UK/US inspection team visited the facility in 1993 and identified five underground reinforced concrete bunkers holding hundreds of thousands of hens eggs being used to grow massive quantities of virus, allegedly in order to sustain a strategic weapons system."[42][43]. In July 1931, the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU), a forerunner of the NKVD, seized control of the Convent of the Intercession in Suzdal and then the following year created a special prison laboratory, or sharashka, where around nineteen leading plague and tularaemia specialists were forced to work on the development of biological weapons. I guess we shall see., Russia makes claims of US-backed biological weapon plot at UN, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. There are various accounts regarding the relocation of STI, with official Russian sources indicating that it was initially transferred to Saratov. ??????? Russia says it has uncovered a military biological weapons programme in Ukraine, claims described by the US as "absurd propaganda". J Miller, S Engelberg, and W Broad (2001). The State Department, per a 2021 report, "assesses that the Russian Federation (Russia) maintains an offensive BW program and is in violation of its obligation under [the Biological Weapons . Among his terrifying prophecies for 2021, the 16th century astrologer hinted that Russian scientists would create a biological weapon that will create a virus which turns people into zombies - and will eventually leave us extinct. At a U.N. Security Council meeting on March 11, 2022, Russia U.N. Not only did Russia inherit from the USSR the world's largest arsenal of biological weapons, but also all classified databanks on biological warfare program outputs, engineering documentation and manuals providing guidance in biological weapons deployment. Joining is simple and doesnt need to cost a lot: You can become a sustaining member for as little as $3 or $5 a month. Subcommittee on Intelligence, Emerging Threats and Capabilities. The most important difference between biological weapons development, and the mundane but vital work of identifying, describing, and studying the viruses and bacteria that occur in nature and pose a threat to public health, Favorov told me, is that none of these labs have any type of equipment for the modification of the strain., In all these labs, he said, you only have the equipment which might describe what you have, but not to modify it., Update: Friday, March 18, 3:05 a.m. "The Memoirs of an Inconvenient Man: Revelations About Biological Weapons Research in the Soviet Union" by Igor V. Domaradskij and Wendy Orent, This page was last edited on 24 January 2023, at 00:52. The only possible explanation for why the samples were disposed of in such haste, Kirillov insisted, must have been to prevent Russian experts from discovering that synthetic biology methods were being tested there to enhance the microorganisms pathogenic properties.. Our group observed nothing out of the ordinary, or that we wouldnt expect to see in a legitimate facility of this sort.. It breeds and spreads among birds, but on rare occasion, it can infect . The defendants were found guilty and sentenced to terms ranging from two to twenty-five years in Soviet labour correction camps. Velikanov was placed in command of the Gorodomlya Island facility which was named as the Biotechnical Institute, also known by the code designation V/2-1094. At a briefing in Moscow on March 7, 2022, Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov presented documents on recent biological research projects at labs in Ukraine supported by U.S. funding. The Soviet Union's 1991 collapse made Russia the inheritor of the vast majority of the USSR's weapons of mass destruction. ????? Two major Japanese offensive BW installations at Pingfang and Changchun were overrun by the Red Army. We were given access to all areas of the site, examined relevant documentation, and interviewed staff, and concluded that the Center demonstrates significant transparency, Lentzosreported in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Consider what the world of media would look like without The Intercept. It is Russia that has active chemical and biological weapons programs and is in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention and Biological Weapons Convention. Following the end of the Soviet Union, the movement seemed to have lost its relevance. We know that because WHO is urging Ukraine to destroy any highly dangerous agents to avoid the risk of a disastrous outbreak should one of the labs be hit by Russian forces. When the project started, Eurasianet reported, Sovaldi was administered to 5,800 Georgian hepatitis patients with severe complications like advanced liver fibrosis and cirrhosis. Because the first patients to get the drug were the sickest, it is not surprising thatdozens of them died before the drug could clear the virus from their system. UK and US intelligence officials have warned there is "serious concern" Russia could use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine. The goal of this and other Pentagon-funded biological studies in Ukraine was the creation of a mechanism for the covert spread of deadly pathogens., On March 10, Russian defense ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov claimed, falsely, that documents seized in Ukraine indicated that U.S. and Ukrainian researchers were plotting to use birds to covertly send deadly pathogens to Russia pic.twitter.com/83nNA897kc. ???????? Russian scientists who have looked at the documents Russia calls proof of bioweapons labs in Ukraine say there is no evidence for such claims. ????? By ZEKE MILLER March 9, 2022. In 1930, Velikanov was placed in command of a new facility, the Red Army's Vaccine-Sera Laboratory in Vlasikha, around 30 miles to the west of Moscow. Forty years after the UN General Assembly gave the secretary-general broad authority to investigate allegations of chemical and biological weapons use, that power is still under threat. The first set of Ukrainian documents to be made public by the Russian military were published by the Russian government news agency RIA Novosti on March 6. In addition to the threat of pathogens held in Ukrainian labs leaking or falling into the hands of Russian forces, there is the threat of Russia launching its own biological weapons attack. Now, the Biden White House has taken the extraordinary step of calling out both countries on their coordinated propaganda campaign and saying they might be providing cover for a potential . [32] Leitenberg and Zilinskas, in The Soviet Biological Weapons Program: A History (2012), state flatly that "In March 1992Yeltsin acknowledged the existence of an illegal bioweapons program in the former Soviet Union and ordered it to be dissolved. All this suggests that the real lesson Russian officials took from the false American claims of WMD in Iraq is not that such claims need to be backed by solid evidence, but that they can make similarly false claims now, secure in the knowledge that very few people will bother to look at the evidence at all. The Russian Federation is known to possess or have possessed three types of weapons of mass destruction: nuclear weapons, biological weapons, and chemical weapons.It is one of the five nuclear-weapon states recognized under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.. Russia possesses a total of 5,977 nuclear warheads as of 2022, the largest stockpile of nuclear warheads in the . [12] The development of genetically altered strains of smallpox was presumably conducted in the Institute under the leadership of Dr. Sergei Netyosov in the mid-1990s, according to Kenneth Alibek. It asserted that "the bacterial option could be successfully used in war" and proposed a plan for the organisation of Soviet military bacteriology.