Scott A. Miller/Getty Images CNN An explosion has caused a fire at a Russian. 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. The Russian governments claim that the biological labs funded by the U.S. were experimenting with dangerous pathogens,thoughdebunked by the Russian biologists, was echoed by influential voices on Fox News like Tucker Carlson and Tulsi Gabbard. 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. A state lab in Russia's Siberia is beginning research into prehistoric viruses preserved in the remains of animals found in melting permafrost. As part of their work the labs do seem to hold dangerous pathogens. Russia's bioweapon conspiracy theory finds support in US 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. For the past six years, the BNITM has instead been working with public health officials in Ukraine to investigate seroprevalence, the existence of antibodies, on various infectious diseases occurring in this region. 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. This week, speaking to business leaders in Washington, Joe Biden warned that Vladimir Putin could use biological weapons. [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. When Gabbard was criticized for saying things about the type of work done in the labs for which there is no evidence, Carlson defended her in a statement that echoed the false claims made by Russian officials. The Intercept is an independent nonprofit news outlet. 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. 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. Photo: Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images. And weapons developed in secret Soviet labs are still used to poison Russian dissidents and defectors. 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 . In a related report by the Inquisitr, if the Ebola virus did become airborne, this feat would require genetic engineering, since evolutionary theory seems to indicate the scenario would not happen naturally. and the kicker is it will eventually leave us extinct. The Leningrad Military Medical Academy began cultivating typhus in chicken embryos. We dont have ads, so we depend on our members 35,000 and counting to help us hold the powerful to account. 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. [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. The samples of Marburg taken from Ustinov's organs were more powerful than the original strain. The Russian ambassador to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, evoked the specter of an uncontrolled spread of bio agents from Ukraine. As for the year ahead, a Russian scientist will create a biological weapon that will turn people into zombies, DublinLive reported on Saturday, based on a prophecy warning of the "half-dead to . 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. Nostradamus predicts famine and a zombie virus for 2021 - 9Honey 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. Sverdlovsk bioweapons production facility (Military Compound 19). After US intelligence accurately predicted Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it's disturbing that Americans now fear Russia is preparing to use chemical weapons during the conflict. The first Russian biologist to make his analysis of the evidence widely known wasEugene Lewitin, who holds advanced degrees in biology from Moscow State University and GosNIIgenetika, a biotechnology research institute. [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. Biden Says Putin Could Use Chemical, Biological Weapons in Ukraine 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. The kind of reporting we do is essential to democracy, but it is not easy, cheap, or profitable. Ukraine has biological research facilities, she said, adding that there was concern that Russian forces were trying to gain control of the labs. The Lab-Made Virus the U.S. Fears Could Be Made Into a Biological Weapon Tens of thousands of scientists, researchers, doctors, engineers, technicians, and . 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. [12] Another, possibly more reliable source, regarding the Soviet BW programme in Leningrad are a series of secret reports generated by the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) - commonly known as MI6. This fake narrative is unfortunately circulating very widely.. [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. ", United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs, "Disarmament Treaties Database: 1925 Geneva Protocol", "Russian Federation: Ratification of 1925 Geneva Protocol", "The Shortcomings of Indeterminacy in Arms Control Regimes: The Case of the Biological Weapons Convention", "Ex-Soviet Bioweapons Labs Are Fighting COVID-19. This work was allegedly initiated in the 1920s at the Leningrad Military Medical Academy under the control of OGPU (see above). 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. In 2018, when Russia faced international condemnation for trying to kill the former spy Sergei Skripal with a nerve agent, Russian state television suddenly revived conspiratorial claims that a U.S.-funded lab in Georgia was testing biological weapons on the Georgian people. The World Health Organization (WHO) has said it is unaware of activity by Ukraine violating any international treaty, including the ban on biological weapons. Thats all it takes to support the journalism you rely on. 12 Mar 2022. [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. 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. Forget COVID-19? CDC offers tips on surviving zombie apocalypse - KSTU Explosion at Russian lab known for housing smallpox virus | CNN 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. Although Russia has substantially reduced its stockpiles from Cold War peaks, it still controls one of the world's largest and deadliest nuclear forces, and deteriorating relations with the United States have stalled further arms control diplomacy. He also alleges that human experimentation occurred with typhus, glanders and melioidosis in the Solovetsky camp. Lewitin explained that all of the bacterial strains mentioned in the documents were the kind of samples found in any public health lab or epidemiological institute. 1. Biblical famine As well as a deadly zombie virus, Earth apparently 'will be hit with a famine of biblical proportions.' Favorov told me that older, Soviet-trained military biologists probably assume that the U.S. is still doing that sort of work. Russia makes claims of US-backed biological weapon plot at UN 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. Chief among these is Erhardt Geissler who notes that tularaemia is endemic in the region and in any case a large outbreak occurred during the winter of 1941-1942. "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. ???????? WASHINGTON White House officials have dismissed Russian allegations, recently leveled again by a top Kremlin general, that the United States developed biological weapons in Ukraine,. At least one of the pilots was a Russian Foreign Intelligence Service officer". [27], In the 1990s, the President of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin, admitted to an offensive bio-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. 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. Soviet biological weapons program - Wikipedia The key hub of the Soviet BW programme at this time was the Scientific-Research Institute of Epidemiology and Hygiene located in Kirov. Yet it tried to provide cover for its activities by repeatedly charging that the. Rimmington argues that this "was in fact a pivotal period in the Soviet programme, when BW production technology was being transferred from the military to facilities concealed within civil manufacturing plants. 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. 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. 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. 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. A screenshot of a talk show on Russian state television in 2019. 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. 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. Project Factor was the codename for the budget to develop microbial weapons with new properties of high virulence, improved stability, and new clinical syndromes. Top 5 countries most prepared for biological warfare 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. The world's most dangerous bioweapons - Army Technology Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, presentation of faulty intelligence on Iraqs suspected weapons of mass destruction. "[30] Yeltsin promised to end the Russian bio-weapons program and to convert its facilities for benevolent scientific and medical purposes. He knows therell be severe consequences because of the united Nato front but the point is: its real.. Over the next decade or so, dual-use BW production plants were created at Berdsk, Omutninsk, Penza and Kurgan. ? Finally, Russia has a track record of accusing the West of the very crimes that Russia itself is perpetrating. Moscow went on to claim that it had found documents related to the secret US operation in laboratories in Kharkiv and Poltava. Given the subsequent Russian shelling of Kharkiv, the Ukrainian effort to ensure that an attack on the lab there could not cause the accidental release of bacteria seems prudent. 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. Unfortunately, a bioweapon made using an artificial virus has recently become feasible, making the possibility of a zombie virus seem real. 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. 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. 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 . Who would hold party elites accountable to the values they proclaim to have? Carlson distorted Nulands statement into an admission that, in his words, Ukraine has secret bio labs and that falsely asserted that Nuland said whatever theyre doing in those labs is so dangerous and so scary that she is quite concerned that the so-called research material inside those bio labs might fall into the hands of Russian forces.. Ukraine war: What chemical and biological weapons could Russia have Here's what he said: "Few young people: halfdead to give a start. [10] It was at this time that Ivan Mikhailovich Velikanov[ru], an expert on botulinum toxin and botulism, emerged as the lead scientist in the early Soviet biological weapons program. After the Soviet Union was dissolved, Favorov said, most of the former Soviet states outside Russia were in dire need of better laboratories to perform modern disease surveillance and research, and to safely store strains of deadly endemic diseases known as special pathogens that they needed to study and describe to protect their populations from outbreaks. The theory took on a life of its own on social media under the hashtag #usbiolabs, and found a welcome home among rightwing outlets in the US including the War Room podcast of Donald Trumps former adviser Steve Bannon and the Fox News primetime show hosted by Tucker Carlson. Those records were obtained and made public by a former head of Georgian intelligence living in exile in Russia, Igor Giorgadze. 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. It has been successful in helping former Soviet and other countries fulfill public health obligations. This would not have sudden onset, like the movies. It conducted its secret activities at numerous sites across the USSR and employed 30-40,000 people.[20]. Committee on Armed Services. The BNITM has never and will never work directly or indirectly on bio weapons, the statement said. 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. How U.S. Bioweapons in Ukraine Became Russia's New Big Lie 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". Russia was reportedly developing smallpox-based weapons as late as 1988. "Few young people: half-dead to give a start," Nostradamus mentioned in his writing. [1] [2] Defecting Soviet bioweaponeers such as Vladimir Pasechnik and Colonel Kanatjan Alibekov confirmed that the program had been massive and still existed. The event incited heated discussion. He had been a leading participant of a Russian team despatched to combat the October 1910 to February 1911 outbreak of pneumonic plague in Manchuria. [12] It was reported to use chicken eggs for the cultivation of the virus. 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. [15], In his history of the Soviet Union in the Second World War, Christopher Bellamy argues that if either side was going to break the 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibiting the use of gas and bacteriological warfare, then 1942 was the most likely year. 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. The Chimera Project attempted in the late 1980s and early 1990s to combine DNA from Venezuelan equine encephalitis and smallpox at Obolensk, and Ebola virus and smallpox at the Vector Institute. U.S. says Russia may seek to use chemical, biological weapons in - CBC The Russian team is this week reportedly taking samples from a collection of beasts preserved in ice that have been found in recent years.. Strange, alarming, morbidly intriguing -- any or all of those would serve to describe the newly announced "Zombie Gun" that Russian president Vladimir Putin plans to use "for achieving. Because it upsets so many people that I talk to constantly, I have introduced a bill to stop taxpayer funding for bioweapons, Greene said. ), Pettersson and her colleagues converted the screenshots of the original documents ordering the destruction of pathogens at the labs published in the Russia media into a Google Docs spreadsheet that is easier to read and pointed out that, despite claims from the Russian military, there are no deadly pathogens on this list no plague, anthrax, cholera., In their detailed debunking of the Russian claims, the researchers explained that any effort to create biological weapons would require a much larger base of strains than those listed. The documents indicate that the Kharkiv lab destroyed only 40 test tubes and the Poltava lab destroyed 24. The group also agreed with Lewitins conclusion that creating a military bacterium specific only for a certain nationality and especially for Russians is absolutely evolutionarily impossible., In conclusion, the researchers said, the statements published in the Russian state media, and attributed to senior Russian officials, are unsubstantiated anti-scientific bullshit., We thank Russian biologists for not being afraid to tell the truth, Serhiy Leshchenko, a Ukrainian investigative journalist and an adviser to the Ukrainian presidents office, said in a statement on YouTube from embattled Kyiv. [31][4], Compliance with the agreement, as well as the fate of the former Soviet bio-agents and facilities, is still mostly undocumented. ??????????? Crucially, Geissler notes that there are no contemporary accounts by the German army or intelligence services regarding the use of F. tularensis as a biological weapon at Stalingrad. At this time the country only possessed a single facility focused on viruses, the Moscow-based D.I. [18] In his uncorroborated account, Alibek claims that capacity for the production of smallpox virus was established in Zagorsk. 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. [35] At least two agents died, presumably from the transported pathogens. Written by Tuan Nguyen, Contributor on April 8, 2012. When Russias U.N. ambassador, Vasily Nebenzya, presented those false claims to the Security Council last week, he scoffed at American denials by mentioning that the diplomats were in the very same room where, in 2003, Colin Powell had held up that famous test tube during his presentation of faulty intelligence on Iraqs suspected weapons of mass destruction. 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. 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.. [6] Upon ratification of the Geneva Protocol, several countries made reservations regarding its applicability and use in retaliation. The State of the War. The biolab narrative "exploded on social media right . Russians test a gun that turns people into zombies Russian President Vladimir Putin says a mind-control gun may be ready within a decade. For starters, a Russian scientist will successfully develop a biological weapon in 2021, and create a virus that morphs humankind into zombies. At a second briefing three days later,he claimed that documents on public health projects to detect and monitor animal diseases in Ukraine including coronaviruses in bats, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever and hantavirus in ticks and rodents, and avian flu in ducks that migrate from Ukraine to Russia were proof of a sinister plot to send infected animals to Russia. Red Lies: Biological warfare and the Soviet Union, An Obscure Weapon of the Cold War Edges Into the Limelight, Soviet Army used 'rat weapon' during WWII, Memories of bioweapons developer Domaradsky (Russian), Re-Evaluating Russia's Biological Weapons Policy, as Reflected in the Criminal Code and Official Admissions: Insubordination Leading to a President's Subordination, Bioweapons from Russia: Stemming the Flow, Stepnagorsk Scientific and Technical Institute, Institute of Ultra Pure Biochemical Preparations, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Soviet_biological_weapons_program&oldid=1135331140, Short description is different from Wikidata, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Articles with unsourced statements from August 2021, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0.
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