? [16] This conclusion is not surprising, since it was precisely at this moment, that both the fate of the Soviet Union and the Third Reich hung precariously in the balance during the build-up to, and the outcome of, the Battle of Stalingrad. That, he said, is nonsense that echoes German Nazi propaganda.. Unit 68240 of Vladimir. [21] The Soviet bioweapon effort became a huge program rivaling its considerable investment in nuclear arms. Soviet officials, including Boris Yeltsin, lied about what caused the outbreak until 1992. 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. [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. 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. 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. It conducted its secret activities at numerous sites across the USSR and employed 30-40,000 people.[20]. He knows therell be severe consequences because of the united Nato front but the point is: its real.. 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. Biden said those accusations were not merely false, but a sign that President Vladimir Putin. The nerve agent is classified as a chemical weapon, not a biological weapon, by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. That possibility leaves even seasoned experts rattled. The Zombie Threat Is Very Real!!! Consider what the world of media would look like without The Intercept. A state lab in Russia's Siberia is beginning research into prehistoric viruses preserved in the remains of animals found in melting permafrost. ????? 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. "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. 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. Yes, and yes. About 30 minutes after this article was published on Thursday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican who appears to also represent the extreme reaches of the internet, introduced Russian disinformation about bioweapons in U.S.-funded labs in Ukraine into the Congressional record. In the first two years of the program, more than 90 percent of the first 30,000 patients to be treated were cured of the illness. The Russian ambassador to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, evoked the specter of an uncontrolled spread of bio agents from Ukraine. [18] In his uncorroborated account, Alibek claims that capacity for the production of smallpox virus was established in Zagorsk. The Russian Biological Weapons Program: Vanished or Disappeared? [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. ??? 48 - a tsarist-era red-brick manor house located in Cherntsy (Ivanovo region). 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. These weapons could be . Lewitin offered a more detailed debunking of the evidence in an interview with Marina Aronova, a correspondent for Siberia.Realities, a regional news outlet of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which is funded by the U.S. government. Zlatogorov was in fact one of the world's leading authorities on pneumonic plague and had studied 40 strains of plague bacilli from around the world. In the summer of 2016, the Russian army participated in the fight against the epidemic of anthrax in Yamal. The threat of chemical and nuclear warfare loomed large over most militaries during the Cold War. The biolab narrative "exploded on social media right . What if these labs are creating viruses just like COVID-19?. [25] This triggered George H. W. Bush and Margaret Thatcher to pressure Gorbachev into opening for inspection several of his facilities. [35], In the 2000s, the academician, "A.S.", proposed a new biological warfare program, called the "Biological Shield of Russia" to president Vladimir Putin. 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. ???????????? UK and US intelligence officials have warned there is "serious concern" Russia could use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine. Maybe there are dangerous strains in other documents that cannot be published openly., When I asked Lewitin in an online chat this week what he made of the other documents, on research projects involving American experts from the CDC and USDA, he replied: I would say that this is a hash of scattered information with no relevance to the subject [of] bioweapons. 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. 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. Because it upsets so many people that I talk to constantly, I have introduced a bill to stop taxpayer funding for bioweapons, Greene said. 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 . "Biological weapons have been outlawed since the BWC entered into force in 1975," she added. ??????? Although the USSR also signed the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), the Soviets subsequently augmented their biowarfare programs. With recent advances in gene editing, it may be possible for bioterrorists to design viruses capable of altering our behaviour, spreading such a disease and ultimately killing us. We are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces.. Put another way, what this senior Russian diplomat said in 2018 holds true today: Russia will not be deterred by a lack of evidence from claiming that the U.S. operated biological weapons labs in former Soviet states on its borders. Project Factor was the codename for the budget to develop microbial weapons with new properties of high virulence, improved stability, and new clinical syndromes. And those who have read it will say: Well, yes, maybe there are no dangerous pathogens in these documents. House. 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. 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. 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]. 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. Russian ambassador to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, accused Ukraine of operating chemical and biological labs with US support. [15], In the Far East the Soviet Union had been subject of a BW attack in 1939 during the battles of Khalkin Gol (Nomonhan) by Japan's Unit 731 under Shir Ishii. Ivanovskii Institute of Virology. 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. We dont have ads, so we depend on our members 35,000 and counting to help us hold the powerful to account. 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. 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. At some point around the 25 September, the facility was evacuated and the buildings partially destroyed. The scheme was originally known as Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) but is now more commonly referred to as biological engagement. Those records were obtained and made public by a former head of Georgian intelligence living in exile in Russia, Igor Giorgadze. The discussion came amid Russia's ongoing military invasion of Ukraine, which began on February 24. 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. [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. [29] On 11 April 1992, Yeltsin decreed "the termination of research on offensive biological weapons, the dismantlement of experimental technological lines for the production of biological agents and the closure of biological weapons testing facilities",[23][30] and in September 1992 Yeltsin agreed in a Joint Statement on Biological Weapons with the United States and the United Kingdom that the two Western nations would "have a blanket invitation to visit facilities of concern in Russia under ground rules that guarantee unprecedented access, including access to the entire facility, the ability to take samples, the right to interview the workers and scientists, and the right to record the visits on video and audio tape. [10], In his account of the history of the Soviet BW programme, Alibek, who as Kanatzhan Baizakovich Alibekov had been a biological weapons scientist for Biopreparat, describes a quite separate strand of early BW research being pursued in Leningrad. (11 October 2013). Zombie Attack in Russia REAL(biological wapon) Ataque de Zombies en Rusia REAL (arma biologica).wmv - YouTube AboutPressCopyrightContact usCreatorsAdvertiseDevelopersTermsPrivacyPolicy &. His American counterpart, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, warned that Russias claim could be a pretext for launching its own biological weapons attack on Ukraine. Around 100 personnel from Velikanov's Biotechnical Institute participated in the experiments. How many covert wars, miscarriages of justice, and dystopian technologies would remain hidden if our reporters werent on the beat? 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.. It says material is being destroyed to conceal . 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". It has been successful in helping former Soviet and other countries fulfill public health obligations. Kirillov also stated, without evidence, that a swine flu outbreak in 2007 and increased cases of measles, rubella, diphtheria, and tuberculosis in Ukraine had somehow been caused by biological research at U.S.-funded labs in Ukraine and the former Soviet republic of Georgia. 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. Even reporters for state-run outlets, Lewitin said, have a duty to study what the state calls proof and consult experts to make sure official claims about science are accurate. FilippaLentzos, a biologist and a scholar at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studiesreported in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists that year that she had been part of a group of international experts that visited the lab in Tbilisi. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Asked why the Pentagon provided the money beyond the obvious fact that the Department of Defense is the one part of the U.S. government that is lavishly funded Favorov said that the Pentagon took the lead in the effort to upgrade biosecurity in those countries partly in response to the anthrax attacks in the U.S. that started just a week after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. 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. 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. 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. It was complete with viruses and pathogens that were genetically-altered and antibiotic resistant, with sophisticated delivery systems. The allegations were quickly amplified by China, which supported the claims during the UN security council debate. 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. "It is a milestone for Russia's deception and lies," Thomas-Greenfield shot back. 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. [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. On March 13, Gabbard tweeted a video viewed nearly 3 million times, in which she falsely claimed that the public health labs were conducting research on dangerous pathogens and were engaged in that she called dangerous research, including gain of function, similar to the lab in Wuhan where Covid-19 may have originated from.. 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. Earlier in March, the Russian ministry of foreign affairs posted a tweet accusing the US and Ukraine of running a secret military-biological programme inside the stricken country. 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.. Ukraine does operate biological laboratories that receive US funding. 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. [23][41], A Soviet-era agricultural biowarfare programme was pursued from 1958 through to the collapse of the USSR in 1991. 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. This was later to manifest itself as a key feature of the subsequent Biopreparat programme". The US undersecretary of state Victoria Nuland affirmed those facts in a Senate foreign relations committee hearing this week, in which the Republican senator Marco Rubio asked directly if Ukraine had biological weapons. 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. Written by Tuan Nguyen, Contributor on April 8, 2012. [15], In the immediate post-war period, Lavrenty Beria, the Soviet minister of internal affairs, maintained control of the Soviet BW programme and further developed its offensive capabilities. 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. 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. This week, speaking to business leaders in Washington, Joe Biden warned that Vladimir Putin could use biological weapons. Western officials and open-source researchers offered convincing evidence that both attempted murders were carried out by Russian intelligence agents. 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. 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. [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. 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. [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. According to Alibek, in 1928, the Revolutionary Military Council signed a decree about the weaponization of typhus. 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 . Operating under the codename "Ekologiya" (Ecology), the new network incorporated three virology facilities. 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. Putin comments on US-led biolabs in Ukraine pic.twitter.com/oqO4WDDxSr. The list of destroyed strains published by RIA Novosti and other Russian media outlets contains not a single particularly dangerous strain. The key hub of the Soviet BW programme at this time was the Scientific-Research Institute of Epidemiology and Hygiene located in Kirov. However, the largest epidemic of anthrax in Russia took place in Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinburg) in April 1979. 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. [12] It was reported to use chicken eggs for the cultivation of the virus. Two major Japanese offensive BW installations at Pingfang and Changchun were overrun by the Red Army. "[24], In 1989 the defector Vladimir Pasechnik convinced the British that the Soviets had genetically engineered a strain of Yersinia pestis to resist antibiotics. It says material is being destroyed to conceal . 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.
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