[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. The scheme was originally known as Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) but is now more commonly referred to as biological engagement. This week, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria . Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya held up images of pregnant women injured by Russian shelling of a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine. Simply not true, I guarantee you.. 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. 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. J Miller, S Engelberg, and W Broad (2001). 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. Russia has claimed without any evidence that biological weapons are being developed in laboratories in Ukraine with support from the United States. She warned that Moscows claim of a secret biological weapons programme in Ukraine could in fact be laying the foundations for a Russian chemical or biological weapons assault. 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. This particular flu virus belongs to a strain called H5N1. 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. Ukraine has biological research facilities, she said, adding that there was concern that Russian forces were trying to gain control of the labs. The accidental release of anthrax in 1979 from a Soviet military research facility in Yekaterinburg, which was known as Sverdlovsk in Soviet times, killed at least 66 people. and the kicker is it will eventually leave us extinct. 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. Over the next decade or so, dual-use BW production plants were created at Berdsk, Omutninsk, Penza and Kurgan. 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 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. According to The Soviet Unions Agricultural Biowarfare Programme (2021), "The Pokrov biologics plant is the best-documented of the agricultural BW mobilisation facilities. 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. 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. A state lab in Russia's Siberia is beginning research into prehistoric viruses preserved in the remains of animals found in melting permafrost. 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. It asserted that "the bacterial option could be successfully used in war" and proposed a plan for the organisation of Soviet military bacteriology. 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. 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. [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. 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. We know pathogens dont respect borders, so helping to put out public health fires before they become too big is an advantage to all of us, she said. 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. These weapons could be . In the summer of 1936, Ivan Mikhailovich Velikanov led the Red Army's first expedition to conduct tests of biological weapons on Vozrozhdeniya Island. Last week, both the Chinese statement and the Infowars video were promoted on Facebook as paid advertisements. It says material is being destroyed to conceal . Thats all it takes to support the journalism you rely on. 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. "[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". 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 paperwork even indicated that some of the strains had been purchased from Russian labs. 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.. These worked in close collaboration with Soviet military virologists and focused on both animal pathogens such as FMD and exotic zoonotic infections. 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. Asked why she thought the Russian officials expected to get away with so inaccurately describing the contents of the documents they made public, Pettersson suggested that they might have guessed many Russians would not look too closely at the lists of bacterial strains used in the Ukrainian labs because they were all written in Latin. It is Russia that has long maintained a biological weapon program in violation of international law.. Russian authorities said that no biological material was present in the lab at the time of the explosion. Two special ships and two aircraft were assigned to Khatanever for use in tests focused on the dissemination of tularaemia bacteria. Leitenberg, Milton and Raymond A. Zilinskas (2012). 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. The Leningrad Military Medical Academy began cultivating typhus in chicken embryos. 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. Representative to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield warned that Russias claim could be a pretext for it launching its own biological weapons attack on Ukraine. 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. The Russian strategy, of loudly making claims about biological weapons research and pointing to documents that do not, in any way, confirm that to be true has been employed multiple times in recent years. Fox News ??????? 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. 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. 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. The Zombie Threat Is Very Real!!! 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. Favorov recalled that there was pressure on Soviet scientists to look for potential military applications for their research. Tucker Carlson took the bait offered by the Russian militarys reference to coronavirus. Germany launched Operation Barbarossa in June 1941 and following the capture of nearby Kalinin in October, the BW facility on Gorodomlya Island was evacuated and eventually relocated to Kirov. "Biological weapons have been outlawed since the BWC entered into force in 1975," she added. 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. [1] [2] Another innovation was the "mobilization production facilities"ostensibly civil manufacturing plantswhich incorporated capacity for production of weapons in wartime emergency." #??????? [18] In his uncorroborated account, Alibek claims that capacity for the production of smallpox virus was established in Zagorsk. 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. [12], A production line to manufacture smallpox on an industrial scale was launched in the Vector Institute in 1990. 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. An outbreak of weaponized smallpox occurred during testing in 1971. 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. 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. [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. This would not have sudden onset, like the movies. 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). That possibility leaves even seasoned experts rattled. The first group to arrive from Kirov included the new director of the Institute of Hygiene, Major General Nikolai Fillipovich Kopylov. 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. 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. 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. 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. The Russian ambassador to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, evoked the specter of an uncontrolled spread of bio agents from Ukraine. Photo: Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images. ???????:#?????? 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. "It is a milestone for Russia's deception and lies," Thomas-Greenfield shot back. This decree established a secret network of BW institutes within the USSR Ministry of Agriculture. 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. On Monday, Biden said Russia was "also suggesting that Ukraine has biological and chemical weapons in Ukraine That's a clear sign he is considering using both of those. [1] The program began in the 1920s and lasted until at least September 1992 but has possibly been continued by Russia after that. 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. [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. 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. 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. In his account of the Soviet BW programme, Alibek, a former senior manager of Biopreparat, raises the intriguing possibility that in the late summer of 1942 the Red Army engaged in the deliberate aerosol dissemination of Francisella tularensis (the causative agent of tularaemia) against German panzer troops near Stalingrad. His back is against the wall, said Biden, mentioning the false claims about US-funded biolabs in Ukraine. 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. Russia's mission in New York called for an emergency meeting Friday, 24 hours after its defense ministry falsely claimed it uncovered "U.S. secret military biological projects in Ukraine," per . ATLANTA, GA. (THECOUNT) Forget the current worldwide pandemic, according to CDC, there may also be a zombie apocalypse coming in 2021. Conclusion. ???????? However, the largest epidemic of anthrax in Russia took place in Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinburg) in April 1979. 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. Earlier this week, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, accused Russia under Putin of having a long and well-documented track record of using chemical weapons, pointing to the poisoning of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny and Russias support of the Syrian regime while it deployed chemical weapons. Russian ambassador to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, accused Ukraine of operating chemical and biological labs with US support. Western officials and open-source researchers offered convincing evidence that both attempted murders were carried out by Russian intelligence agents. However, citing doubts concerning the United States compliance with the BWC, they subsequently augmented their biowarfare programs. United States. [7] The Soviet Union was one, when it deposited its ratification notice. ??????? Putin comments on US-led biolabs in Ukraine pic.twitter.com/oqO4WDDxSr. "Dead through spite, he will cause the others to shine." [19], In 1953 the management of the Soviet BW programme was assigned to the USSR Ministry of Defence's Fifteenth Administration. ?????????? German intelligence independently identified the secret BW programme allegedly managed by Zlatogorov and Maslakovets. Project Bonfire was the codename for the budget to develop antibiotic-resistant microbial strains. He knows therell be severe consequences because of the united Nato front but the point is: its real.. No. The secret program was code-named "Ecology". Scientists warn that humans should be worried about being wiped out by a killer pathogen that is specifically designed to kill people of only a particular race, based on their genetic material/. ", 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. 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. If you're dead, you're immobile and you rot. It has been successful in helping former Soviet and other countries fulfill public health obligations. 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. 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. 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. Both the US and Ukraine have categorically denied they are developing biological weapons inside the country. [15], On the 22 June 1941, Nazi Germany commenced Operation Barbarossa and invaded the Soviet Union along a 2,900-kilometre front. 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. 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. These agents were prepared to be sprayed down on enemy fields from tanks attached to airplanes over hundreds of miles. 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. 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 . The Russian team is this week reportedly taking samples from a collection of beasts preserved in ice that have been found in recent years.. The virus can be isolated and produced as a biological weapon. Its core staff were sourced from the Kirov BW facility. [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. 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,. 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. A screenshot of a talk show on Russian state television in 2019. Nuland did not answer the question head on. ????????? The UN security council met on Friday to discuss Moscows claims the US is funding military biological activities in Ukraine. Scott A. Miller/Getty Images CNN An explosion has caused a fire at a Russian. Russia claimed to discover U.S.-funded biological weapon facilities in Ukraine this week, an evidence-free allegation the United States quickly denied and cast as another Kremlin attempt . [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. 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. 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. 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. You know, if theres no evidence right now, that doesnt mean that no evidence exists, Zakharova said. Biblical famine As well as a deadly zombie virus, Earth apparently 'will be hit with a famine of biblical proportions.' The samples of Marburg taken from Ustinov's organs were more powerful than the original strain. Following the end of the Soviet Union, the movement seemed to have lost its relevance. "He's already used. Russia says it has uncovered a military biological weapons programme in Ukraine, claims described by the US as "absurd propaganda". 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. ? So what is the dispute all about, and what is actually happening inside Ukraine? Early programs at the military lab focused on Francisella tularensis (the causative agent of tularaemia). Subcommittee on Intelligence, Emerging Threats and Capabilities. 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. Russia to Witness 'Zombie' Anthrax Outbreak? This was later to manifest itself as a key feature of the subsequent Biopreparat programme". Ukraine does operate biological laboratories that receive US funding. The convention was backed by Richard Nixon, who in 1969 also put a stop to the US developing its own offensive biological weapons. ???????????? 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. 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. Journal articles by scientists suggest that in 1999 the experiments were still being continued. Fears are growing Vladimir Put The development and production were conducted by a main directorate ("Biopreparat") along with the Soviet Ministry of Defense, the Soviet Ministry of Agriculture, the Soviet Ministry of Health, the USSR Academy of Sciences, the KGB, and other state organizations. 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. 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.
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