[26], The NunnLugar Cooperative Threat Reduction aimed to secure and dismantle weapons of mass destruction, including the Soviet biological weapons program. 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. The BNITM has never and will never work directly or indirectly on bio weapons, the statement said. 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. At considerable risk to their own safety, 10 Russian biologists, including researchers who remain in Russia, have publicly accused the Russian government of lying about having proof that biological weapons were being developed in Ukrainian labs funded by the United States. Consider what the world of media would look like without The Intercept. Nulands comments were seized upon by far-right commentators as evidence of a secret plot. [35], In the 2000s, the academician, "A.S.", proposed a new biological warfare program, called the "Biological Shield of Russia" to president Vladimir Putin. [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]. Zombie Attack in Russia REAL(biological wapon) Ataque de Zombies en Rusia REAL (arma biologica).wmv - YouTube AboutPressCopyrightContact usCreatorsAdvertiseDevelopersTermsPrivacyPolicy &. ?? 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. The anti-corruption activist Alexey Navalny survived an attempted assassination with the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok in Russia in 2020. Russia's Reform of its Biological Weapons Complex and the Implications for Western Security", "The Soviet Union's Offensive Program: The Implications for Contemporary Arms Control", "Next Generation Bioweapons: Genetic Engineering and BW", "Anthrax genome reveals secrets about a Soviet bioweapons accident", "Interviews With Biowarriors: Sergei Popov", Soviet Defector Warns of Biological Weapons, Statement by Dr. Kenneth Alibek before the Joint Economic Committee of United States Congress, Post-World War II Programs of Biological Weapons. That too, is impossible. Scott A. Miller/Getty Images CNN An explosion has caused a fire at a Russian. Under Putin, Russia has a biological weapons program, one that it has clearly used to target its opponents. No Hyperbola! The proposal had nothing to do with biological weapons research, and the CDC told The Intercept thatthe project did not receive funding and never even began. An Unexpected Meeting: Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov of Russia spoke face-to-face for the first time since Moscow's invasion . When Russian news outlets repeated these claims, Lewitin,the veteran Russian biologist, wrote that they had been duped into printing what he called deliberately false information,fed to them by the military, about what was in the documents. They are working with the remains of extinct woolly . Robert Mackey[emailprotected]theintercept.com@RobertMackey. Biopreparat pursued offensive research, development, and production of biological agents under the guise of legitimate civil biotechnology research. In. Over the next decade or so, dual-use BW production plants were created at Berdsk, Omutninsk, Penza and Kurgan. Away from television screens, the unfounded Russian allegations were echoed by the Chinese foreign ministrys spokesman, Zhao Lijian, and amplified in a conspiratorial Infowars video that was viewed more than 650,000 times. "Dead through spite, he will cause the others to shine." The United Nations security council met earlier this month at Russias request, to discuss Moscows claims that the US is funding military biological activities in Ukraine in other words, secretly developing biological weapons in Ukrainian laboratories. As part of this work, WHO has strongly recommended to the ministry ofhealth in Ukraine and other responsible bodies to destroy high-threatpathogens to prevent any potential spills, the UN health agency said. The Leningrad Military Medical Academy began cultivating typhus in chicken embryos. 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]. Nuland did not answer the question head on. 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. Two times a day to wet clean the room. From this you conclude that in this room Ukrainian nationalists dismember people alive twice a day and sacrifice them to Cthulhu, and then cover up the traces. But they dont tell us about it for nothing. This article has been revised to correct the description of the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok used in two high-profile assassination attempts attributed to Russian intelligence agents by Western governments and journalists. It has also shown a willingness to. ????? [12], A production line to manufacture smallpox on an industrial scale was launched in the Vector Institute in 1990. In 1926, at a small laboratory controlled by VOKhIMU, Fishman initiated research on Bacillus anthracis (the causative agent of anthrax). Operating under the codename "Ekologiya" (Ecology), the new network incorporated three virology facilities. The scheme was originally known as Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) but is now more commonly referred to as biological engagement. Carlsons claims about what Nuland said were quickly translated into Russian by the state broadcaster in Moscow and shared on Twitter by Russian diplomats. The latest claims come just hours . The aim of the project is and was to enable the country to do diagnoses on antibodies itself. The institute added that its project is part of the German governments effort to improve global biosecurity through the minimization of biological risks emanating from highly hazardous pathogens in 25 countries., Konashenkov, the defense ministry spokesperson, also claimed that the documents from Ukraine showed that certain experiments were carried out with samples of coronavirus in bats. The Russian Bioweapons program would be the most capable, deadliest program in the world. "[30] Yeltsin promised to end the Russian bio-weapons program and to convert its facilities for benevolent scientific and medical purposes. "[33] They conclude that "In hindsight, we know that with the ultimate failure of the [negotiations] process and the continued Russian refusal to open the facilities to the present day, neither the Yeltsin or Putin administrations ever carried out 'a visible campaign to dismantle once and for all' the residual elements of the Soviet bioweapons program". Two major Japanese offensive BW installations at Pingfang and Changchun were overrun by the Red Army. German intelligence reported that the institute was engaged in experiments focused on Francisella tularensis (the causative agent of tularaemia) and Yersinia pestis (the causative agent of plague). A total of fourteen highly detailed reports on the Soviet BW programme were issued in the period 1924-1927. However, General Otoz Yamada, Commander of the Kwantung Army had already ordered the destruction and evacuation of these facilities. Soviet officials, including Boris Yeltsin, lied about what caused the outbreak until 1992. [6] Upon ratification of the Geneva Protocol, several countries made reservations regarding its applicability and use in retaliation. Russian ambassador to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, accused Ukraine of operating chemical and biological labs with US support. [4][45] The death toll was at least 66, but no one knows the precise number, because all hospital records and other evidence were destroyed by the KGB, according to former Biopreparat deputy director Kenneth Alibek. It says material is being destroyed to conceal . The statement of the official representative of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, Igor Konashenkov, in combination with the documents attached to this statement, produces just such an impression., Thats how propaganda works, he added. We are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces.. 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. [11] By 1936, scientists working on BW at both Vlasikha and Suzdal were transferred to Gorodomlya Island where they occupied an institute for the study of foot-and-mouth disease which had been built originally for the Peoples Commissariat of Agriculture (Narkomzem). The event incited heated discussion. "And the world sees it." At a meeting in September of the 197 state parties to the biological weapons convention, she said, "Russia failed to provide any credible evidence to support these false allegations" and an overwhelming number of countries that spoke "considered that the issues raised by . Russia's claims about secret American biological warfare labs in Ukraine are taking root in the United States too, uniting COVID-19 conspiracy theorists, QAnon adherents and some . Sverdlovsk bioweapons production facility (Military Compound 19). Over the course of its history, the Soviet program is known to have weaponized and stockpiled the following bio-agents[3] (and to have pursued basic research on many more): These programs became immense and were conducted at dozens of secret sites employing up to 65,000 people. 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. It breeds and spreads among birds, but on rare occasion, it can infect . If you're dead, you're immobile and you rot. ?????????? The safe and effective drug was being administered to Georgians for free as part of an effort to eliminate hepatitis C from Georgia,and the project was overseen by the CDC with donated drugs from Gilead. These are invitations to workshops and accompanying material, lists of instructions on biosafety, lists of completely innocent strains [of pathogens], many of them received from Russian collections., As for the stuff on avian and bat migration investigations, routine research on strains of flu and other viruses in the wild population that could jump to humans, Lewitin told me he couldnt comprehend it any other way than as a complete delirium., A parallel effort to evaluate the first set of documents presented as proof of biological weapons research at the labs in Kharkiv and Poltava was conducted by a group of nine Russian-speaking biologists based in Russia, Belarus, Sweden, and France that was published on Twitter in Russian by Olga V. Pettersson, an ex-pat Soviet expert in genome sequencing. 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. Imagine you come to a certain office and see an inscription on one of the rooms:Instruction for the cleaner. 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. Putin comments on US-led biolabs in Ukraine pic.twitter.com/oqO4WDDxSr. At a U.N. Security Council meeting on March 11, 2022, Russia U.N. 48 - a tsarist-era red-brick manor house located in Cherntsy (Ivanovo region). Speaking at a press briefing in Moscow, Kirillov claimed that a shipment of chemical . In December 1949, the military figures identified by the Soviets as participating in the Japanese BW programme were put on trial in Khabarovsk. It was complete with viruses and pathogens that were genetically-altered and antibiotic resistant, with sophisticated delivery systems. 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. 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. 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. House. 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. Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov presented documents on recent biological research projects at labs in Ukraine supported by U.S. funding at a briefing in Moscow on March 10, 2022. Running parallel to the work underway at Vlasikha, BW research was also being pursued in an institution controlled by the state security apparatus. Project Factor was the codename for the budget to develop microbial weapons with new properties of high virulence, improved stability, and new clinical syndromes. ???????? Russia is seeking to unlock unknown prehistoric viruses up to 50,000-years-old by extracting biological material from carcasses of ancient animals frozen in permafrost. The key hub of the Soviet BW programme at this time was the Scientific-Research Institute of Epidemiology and Hygiene located in Kirov. 2. Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya held up images of pregnant women injured by Russian shelling of a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine. Favorov, who was a well-known Soviet scientist, used his old connections to help oversee the modernization of labs in the former Soviet states, including the lab in Georgia, while serving as the CDCs regional director for Central Asia from 2000 to 2008. His decree was, however, not obeyed. The UN high commissioner for disarmament, Izumi Nakamitsu, confirmed that the UN was not aware of any biological weapons programmes in Ukraine. Russian authorities said that no biological material was present in the lab at the time of the explosion. The Russian team is this week reportedly taking samples from a collection of beasts preserved in ice that have been found in recent years.. Unsecured bioweapons in a war zone are a bad idea, Carlson told his millions of viewers this week. 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. Finally, Russia has a track record of accusing the West of the very crimes that Russia itself is perpetrating. He points to evidence that infected rodents were the key to the large-scale outbreaks and that inhalationary tularaemia may have resulted from inhalation of dust from contaminated straw in matresses. An outbreak of weaponized smallpox occurred during testing in 1971. On the 9 August 1945, the Soviet Union launched its invasion of Japanese-controlled Manchuria. At some point around the 25 September, the facility was evacuated and the buildings partially destroyed. This was later to manifest itself as a key feature of the subsequent Biopreparat programme". ???????????? Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Kremlin spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters: "We can conclude that in Ukrainian laboratories close to our borders, components of biological weapons were being developed. Russian officials accused the U.S. of funding biowarfare efforts in Ukraine, drawing concern from Western officials who fear that a crescendo of allegations about weapons of mass destruction. [1] The program began in the 1920s and lasted until at least September 1992 but has possibly been continued by Russia after that. The comprehensive review of the documents by experts who understand both the science and the Cyrillic alphabet took on new importance on Wednesday, as President Vladimir Putin cited the imaginary threat of weapons of mass destruction near Russias borders as a justification for the invasion of Ukraine. [17] The new military institute later pursued major programmes focused on variola virus and viral haemorrhagic fevers. The Soviet Union's 1991 collapse made Russia the inheritor of the vast majority of the USSR's weapons of mass destruction. ??????????? He didnt take part, but some of his contemporaries did. The outlet interprets Nostradamus' writing as: "A Russian scientist will create a biological weapon and produce a virus that can turn humankind into zombies, and we will all be extinct in the near future." "Sad concepts will come to harm each one, Temporal dignified, the Mass to succeed," Nostradamus wrote. The leniency with which the Japanese BW specialists were treated - the longest sentence any served was seven years - has led a number of scholars to conclude that some sort of deal was struck between the Soviet authorities and the Unit 731 personnel held captive in the USSR. 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. Russia's Defense Ministry says the United States appears to be running a clandestine biological weapons lab in the country of Georgia, allegedly flouting international rules and posing a direct . How many covert wars, miscarriages of justice, and dystopian technologies would remain hidden if our reporters werent on the beat? 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. We dont have ads, so we depend on our members 35,000 and counting to help us hold the powerful to account. The threat of chemical and nuclear warfare loomed large over most militaries during the Cold War. "It is a milestone for Russia's deception and lies," Thomas-Greenfield shot back. Conclusion. The ambassador endorsed a discredited conspiracy theory that the photographs had been staged.