Topline. 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. Leitenberg, Milton and Raymond A. Zilinskas (2012). The list contains only strains common to microbiological and even more so to epidemiological laboratories., More than 800 signatories endorsed Lewitins letter when it was transformed into a petition from Russian biologists urging Russian journalists to stop repeating the governments false, absolutely groundless and hatred-inciting statements about allegedly found evidence of the development of biological weapons in Ukrainian laboratories.. Imagine you come to a certain office and see an inscription on one of the rooms:Instruction for the cleaner. It conducted its secret activities at numerous sites across the USSR and employed 30-40,000 people.[20]. Russians test a gun that turns people into zombies Russian President Vladimir Putin says a mind-control gun may be ready within a decade. The paperwork even indicated that some of the strains had been purchased from Russian labs. The drug had already been approved by the FDA in 2013. General Professor Peter Burgasov, former Chief Sanitary Physician of the Soviet Army, and a senior researcher within the program of biological weapons described this incident: Spores of Bacillus anthracis (the causative agent of anthrax) were accidentally released from a military facility in Sverdlovsk in April 1979. When Steve Rosenberg of the BBC put it to Zakharova in late 2018 that there was no evidence in the documents tracking the Sovaldi project that any biological weapons experiments on humans had been performed in the U.S.-funded lab, the Russian diplomat unwittingly echoed Donald Rumsfelds infamous remarks in 2002 on the lack of evidence for Iraqi WMD, in her reply. ??? In a statement sent to The Intercept, the institute rejected the Russian claims. Subcommittee on Intelligence, Emerging Threats and Capabilities. It was transferred to the control of the USSR Ministry of Defence in March 1954. The Leningrad Military Medical Academy began cultivating typhus in chicken embryos. In February 1928, Fishman prepared a key report for Kliment Efremovich Voroshilov (the People's Commissar for Military and Navy Affairs and Chairman of the USSR's Revolutionary Military Council) on the Soviet Union's preparedness for biological warfare. 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. The Soviet Union covertly operated the world's largest, longest, and most sophisticated biological weapons program, thereby violating its obligations as a party to the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. (Most of that long thread was translated into English by Ilya Lozovsky, an editor at the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. 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 No. The NKVD now switched its focus to apprehending any personnel associated with Units 100 and 731 and began a process of filtration of the 560,000-760,000 Japanese prisoners of war. Domaradskij, Igor V. and Wendy Orent (2003), All-Union Scientific-Research Institute of Microbiology, State Research Centre for Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology, All-Union Scientific-Research Institute of Molecular Biology, All-Union Scientific-Research Institute of Highly Pure Biopreparations, Stepnogorsk Scientific Experimental-Industrial Base, Vector State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology, All-Union Scientific-Research Institute of Veterinary Virology and Microbiology, Poison laboratory of the Soviet secret services, Ministry of Agriculture and Food (Soviet Union) Role in offensive Soviet biological warfare programme, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt2jbscf.30, "2021 Adherence to and Compliance With Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments", "The Trilateral Agreement: lessons for biological weapons verification", "What happened after an explosion at a Russian disease research lab called VECTOR? As part of their work the labs do seem to hold dangerous pathogens. "[30] Yeltsin promised to end the Russian bio-weapons program and to convert its facilities for benevolent scientific and medical purposes. 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.. 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. International restrictions on biological warfare began only with the June 1925 Geneva Protocol, which prohibits the use but not the possession or development of chemical and biological weapons. The Soviet Union conducted experimentations with the Marburg virus in aerosol form to transform it into a strategic-operational biological weapon. By the following year, the idea that the U.S. operated biological weapons labs on Russias borders was treated as an undeniable fact on Russian talk shows. 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. "I'm not . [12] It was reported to use chicken eggs for the cultivation of the virus. [17] The new military institute later pursued major programmes focused on variola virus and viral haemorrhagic fevers. Nostradamus predicted a zombie apocalypse in 2021, citing a Russian scientist who created a biological weapon that produces a virus that - Turns humans zombies. RUSSIA could unleash a bioweapon on Ukraine more lethal than Covid from a Ukrainian lab, the former head of the British Army's chemical weapons unit has warned. 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. Western allies have accused President Vladimir Putin and his . "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. 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. Marburg virus is also a Category A bio-warfare agent identified by the CDC's classification system and is hosted in African fruit bat. The Russian biological weapons program in 2022 By Robert Petersen October 5, 2022 On February 24, Russia launched a war of conquest against Ukraine after it had already illegally annexed Crimea in 2014 and waged war for eight years in the Donbas. In August 1925, he was appointed the first head of the Red Army's Military-Chemical Directorate (Voenno-khimicheskoe upravlenie, abbreviated to VOKhIMU). Correction: March 21, 2022 On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. The key hub of the Soviet BW programme at this time was the Scientific-Research Institute of Epidemiology and Hygiene located in Kirov. Congress. Because it upsets so many people that I talk to constantly, I have introduced a bill to stop taxpayer funding for bioweapons, Greene said. What if strange outbreaks surrounding U.S.-funded biolabs are the result of these labs and the work that is taking place in them? Greene asked. We are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces.. Photo: Russian Ministry of Defense via YouTube. Some of the documents cast by Kirillov as evidence of biological weapons research actually concerned the Ukrainian health ministrys cooperation with German experts from BNITM, the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg, to improve surveillance and diagnosis of diseases like dengue fever and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever. ?????? Kirillov also claimed that in a joint Ukrainian-American project called R-781, bats are considered as carriers of potential biological weapons agents. However, the document describing that project, which was projected on the big screen behind the general, just outlined a proposal for an expert from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta to collaborate with a veterinary medicine specialist in Kharkiv and a researcher in Tbilisi on routine disease surveillance of bats in Ukraine and Georgia, including testing for bacterial and viral infections (such as coronaviruses) and performing genomic sequencing. Unit 68240 of Vladimir. In 1952, as a response to this perceived area of weakness, the Soviet government issued a special decree for the creation of the Scientific-Research Sanitary Institute (NIIS) in Zagorsk. Heeven speculated that a document showing that researchers in Ukraine had sent blood samples to labs in Australia was proof of a secret Pentagon effort to study Slavic DNA, in order to construct a biological weapon that would infect only ethnic Russians. Further attacks were initiated against the Soviet Union by Unit 100 in the summer of 1942, and at a later unspecified date, again by Unit 731. "Biological weapons have been outlawed since the BWC entered into force in 1975," she added. Tucker Carlson took the bait offered by the Russian militarys reference to coronavirus. 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. Consider what the world of media would look like without The Intercept. Scientists are seeking to unlock unknown prehistoric viruses up to 50,000 years old by extracting biological material from carcasses of ancient animals frozen in permafrost, according to reports.. However, citing doubts concerning the United States compliance with the BWC, they subsequently augmented their biowarfare programs. He knows therell be severe consequences because of the united Nato front but the point is: its real.. [19], In 1953 the management of the Soviet BW programme was assigned to the USSR Ministry of Defence's Fifteenth Administration. The anti-corruption activist Alexey Navalny survived an attempted assassination with the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok in Russia in 2020. The Russian Biological Weapons Program: Vanished or Disappeared? 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. ? The threat of chemical and nuclear warfare loomed large over most militaries during the Cold War. During the period 1947-1949 a new military biological weapons facility, the USSR Ministry of Defence's Scientific-Research Institute of Hygiene, was established in Sverdlovsk, It occupied the site of the former Cherkassk-Sverdlovsk Infantry Academy on Ulitsa Zvezdnaya, 1. According to the biologists, documents presented to the public last week by Russias defense ministry as supposed evidence of covert bioweapons labs under Pentagon control in Ukraine actually describe relatively harmless collections of pathogens used for public health research. 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. The U.N. Security Council met at Russia's request to discuss Russia's claim of U.S.-supported chemical and biological weapons labs in Ukraine. [citation needed]. 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. Now hes talking about new false flags hes setting up, including hes asserting that, we, in America, have biological as well as chemical weapons in Europe. The discussion came amid Russia's ongoing military invasion of Ukraine, which began on February 24. The visits occurred in January 1991. In 1992, a Trilateral Agreement was signed with the United States and the United Kingdom promising to end biological weapons programs and convert facilities to benevolent purposes, but compliance with the agreementand the fate of the former Soviet bio-agents and facilitiesis still mostly undocumented. Russia to Witness 'Zombie' Anthrax Outbreak? 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. Project Bonfire was the codename for the budget to develop antibiotic-resistant microbial strains. Favorov told me that older, Soviet-trained military biologists probably assume that the U.S. is still doing that sort of work. 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. In the later summer of 1942, in the face of the German offensive to capture Stalingrad, there was a second evacuation of STI, which was eventually permanently relocated to Kirov, located some 896 kilometres north-east of Moscow on the Vyatka river. In 1926, at a small laboratory controlled by VOKhIMU, Fishman initiated research on Bacillus anthracis (the causative agent of anthrax). Another Russian expat amazed by the Russian claims is Michael Favorov, who immigrated to the U.S. from the Soviet Union three decades ago, after a long career in public health and epidemiology, and then oversaw CDC programs in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. [1][2], During World War II, Joseph Stalin was forced to move his biological warfare (BW) operations out of the way of advancing German forces and may have used tularemia against German troops in 1942 near Stalingrad. The allegations were quickly amplified by China, which supported the claims during the UN security council debate. Nulands comments were seized upon by far-right commentators as evidence of a secret plot. 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 . While the unfunded CDC proposal to monitor diseases in bats in Ukraine and Georgia obtained by the Russian military mentioned surveillance of diseases, including coronaviruses, the idea that any viral strains obtained by the researchers would be manipulated in gain-of-function research was wholly invented by the Russian military, Carlson, and Gabbard. 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. Alibek maintains that "Soviet leaders from Leonid Brezhnev to Mikhail Gorbachev personally authorized prohibited development, testing, and production efforts [and] cites several Gorbachev decrees stepping up the pace of work within the biological weapons complex, and directing the creation of mobile production facilities so that inspectors could not uncover the program. "Few young people: half-dead to give a start," Nostradamus mentioned in his writing. 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. Journal articles by scientists suggest that in 1999 the experiments were still being continued. [23], In the 1980s, the Soviet Ministry of Agriculture successfully developed variants of foot-and-mouth disease and rinderpest against cows, African swine fever for pigs, and psittacosis to kill chicken. In. Maria Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, said that the documents made public by Giorgadze again raise questions about the U.S. militarys true aims and objectives in Georgia. The documents Giorgadze publicized were described as a bombshell on Russian state television, in a report that quoted a former Russian military biologist speculating that Georgians were being used as guinea pigs in biological weapons experiments. Two special ships and two aircraft were assigned to Khatanever for use in tests focused on the dissemination of tularaemia bacteria. As a result there was a tightening-up of state control over personnel working on microbial pathogens and an emphasis on the gathering of intelligence from foreign legations relating to the feasibility and use of biological weapons. ?????????? A report on the briefing from the Russian government news agency Tass included this conspiratorial aside about Sovaldi, which is used to treat chronic hepatitis C infections: Kirillov noted that the U.S.-based Gilead Sciences, in which former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is a key shareholder, manufactured the drug..