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). As a result there was a tightening-up of state control over personnel working on microbial pathogens and an emphasis on the gathering of intelligence from foreign legations relating to the feasibility and use of biological weapons. Russian ambassador to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, accused Ukraine of operating chemical and biological labs with US support. It says material is being destroyed to conceal . Conclusion. 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. 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 . According to The Soviet Unions Agricultural Biowarfare Programme (2021), "The Pokrov biologics plant is the best-documented of the agricultural BW mobilisation 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. 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. 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. 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.. This is one of the best things that we do, Dr Gigi Gronvall, senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told the Guardian. 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 article claims that Nostradamus, also known as Michel de Nostradame, predicted a Russian scientist would create a biological weapon and produce a virus that would turn humans into zombies, according to one of his prophecies from a book discovered at the National Library in Rome "which is believed to belong to him." 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. The documents, and the Russian claims that public health research in the lab in Georgia was a cover for sinister activities, was amplified at the time by Chinese state media. Marburg virus is also a Category A bio-warfare agent identified by the CDC's classification system and is hosted in African fruit bat. We dont have ads, so we depend on our members 35,000 and counting to help us hold the powerful to account. But a closer look at the records from the lab in Georgia reveals that there was nothing suspicious about the deaths reported in 2015, as Russian officials had claimed. 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 UN high commissioner for disarmament, Izumi Nakamitsu, confirmed that the UN was not aware of any biological weapons programmes in Ukraine. [19], In 1953 the management of the Soviet BW programme was assigned to the USSR Ministry of Defence's Fifteenth Administration. [12] However, a number of prominent scholars have disputed Alibek's version of events. The drug had already been approved by the FDA in 2013. 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. 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. Moments later, Nebenzya did something of an accidental homage to Powell, by holding up images of pregnant women who were injured in the shelling of a maternity hospital in Mariupol by Russian forces and repeating the thoroughly debunked claim that the photographs had been staged. 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. (11 October 2013). Russia to Witness 'Zombie' Anthrax Outbreak? Who would hold party elites accountable to the values they proclaim to have? 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,. 12 Mar 2022. Favorov recalled that there was pressure on Soviet scientists to look for potential military applications for their research. General Professor Peter Burgasov, former Chief Sanitary Physician of the Soviet Army, and a senior researcher within the program of biological weapons described this incident: Spores of Bacillus anthracis (the causative agent of anthrax) were accidentally released from a military facility in Sverdlovsk in April 1979. 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. [20], The USSR was a signatory of 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). A total of fourteen highly detailed reports on the Soviet BW programme were issued in the period 1924-1927. ?????????? "Few young people: half-dead to give a start," Nostradamus mentioned in his writing. [22] It comprised various institutions operating under an array of different ministries and departments including the Soviet Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Health, USSR Academy of Sciences, and KGB. 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. He didnt take part, but some of his contemporaries did. The Russian team is this week reportedly taking samples from a collection of beasts preserved in ice that have been found in recent years.. 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. The Leningrad Military Medical Academy began cultivating typhus in chicken embryos. Zombie Attack in Russia REAL(biological wapon) Ataque de Zombies en Rusia REAL (arma biologica).wmv - YouTube AboutPressCopyrightContact usCreatorsAdvertiseDevelopersTermsPrivacyPolicy &. ? He also alleges that human experimentation occurred with typhus, glanders and melioidosis in the Solovetsky camp. [1] The program began in the 1920s and lasted until at least September 1992 but has possibly been continued by Russia after that. The biolab narrative "exploded on social media right . 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. The virus can be isolated and produced as a biological weapon. [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. No. The NKVD now switched its focus to apprehending any personnel associated with Units 100 and 731 and began a process of filtration of the 560,000-760,000 Japanese prisoners of war. 48 - a tsarist-era red-brick manor house located in Cherntsy (Ivanovo region). [17] The new military institute later pursued major programmes focused on variola virus and viral haemorrhagic fevers. In December 1949, the military figures identified by the Soviets as participating in the Japanese BW programme were put on trial in Khabarovsk. 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. [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. 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 . At some point around the 25 September, the facility was evacuated and the buildings partially destroyed. In April 1974, a new agency, the All-Union Science Production Association Biopreparat, was created under the Main Administration of the Microbiological Industry (Glavmikrobioprom) to spearhead the Soviet offensive BW programme. It is Russia that has active chemical and biological weapons programs and is in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention and Biological Weapons Convention. The visits occurred in January 1991. [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. 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. 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 Soviet Union continued the development and mass production of offensive biological weapons, despite having signed the 1972 BWC. The program reportedly includes institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences from Pushchino. 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. [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. 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. [12] It was reported to use chicken eggs for the cultivation of the virus. Let me explain with a simple example, he said. 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. 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. The discussion came amid Russia's ongoing military invasion of Ukraine, which began on February 24. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, "biological weapons, also called germ weapons, are any number of disease-producing agents, such as bacteria, viruses, rickettsiae, fungi, toxins, or other biological agents, that may be utilized as weapons against humans, animals, or plants." 1 Throughout history, pathogens have proven to be the most The convention was backed by Richard Nixon, who in 1969 also put a stop to the US developing its own offensive biological weapons. ? Nostradamus, a locked-in member of the "seer" Mount Rushmore, predicted that a zombie apocalypse will occur in 2021 after a Russian scientist creates a biological weapon that produces a. [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. Moscow Doesn't Like It", "Russia Commits to End Biological Weapons Program", Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland, "Interview: Alexander Kouzminov, Author of Biological Espionage", "From Offence to Defence? The ambassador endorsed a discredited conspiracy theory that the photographs had been staged. The paperwork even indicated that some of the strains had been purchased from Russian labs. The key hub of the Soviet BW programme at this time was the Scientific-Research Institute of Epidemiology and Hygiene located in Kirov. It is Russia that has long maintained a biological weapon program in violation of international law.. 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. 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 . Ukraines ambassador to the world body, Sergiy Kyslytsya, called the idea being advanced by Russia a bunch of insane delirium. [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. 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. Velikanov was placed in command of the Gorodomlya Island facility which was named as the Biotechnical Institute, also known by the code designation V/2-1094. ), 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. Defecting Soviet bioweaponeers such as Vladimir Pasechnik and Colonel Kanatjan Alibekov confirmed that the program had been massive and still existed. The Soviet Union's 1991 collapse made Russia the inheritor of the vast majority of the USSR's weapons of mass destruction. You know, if theres no evidence right now, that doesnt mean that no evidence exists, Zakharova said. Hes already used chemical weapons in the past, and we should be careful of whats about to come. [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. Ukraine does operate biological laboratories that receive US funding. There are various accounts regarding the relocation of STI, with official Russian sources indicating that it was initially transferred to Saratov. At least one of the pilots was a Russian Foreign Intelligence Service officer". The samples of Marburg taken from Ustinov's organs were more powerful than the original strain. On Monday, Biden said Russia was also suggesting that Ukraine has biological and chemical weapons in Ukraine Thats a clear sign he is considering using both of those. 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. 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". 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. Nulands comments were seized upon by far-right commentators as evidence of a secret plot. (Most of that long thread was translated into English by Ilya Lozovsky, an editor at the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. Photo: Russian Ministry of Defense via YouTube. The development was conducted in Vector Institute under the leadership of Dr. Ustinov who was accidentally killed by the virus. The list contains only strains common to microbiological and even more so to epidemiological laboratories.. It was complete with viruses and pathogens that were genetically-altered and antibiotic resistant, with sophisticated delivery systems. The Russian Biological Weapons Program: Vanished or Disappeared? I hope that this is more of a disinformation talking point than an actual thing, Gronvall said. Symptoms. 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. Putin comments on US-led biolabs in Ukraine pic.twitter.com/oqO4WDDxSr. In the summer of 1936, Ivan Mikhailovich Velikanov led the Red Army's first expedition to conduct tests of biological weapons on Vozrozhdeniya Island. By signing up, I agree to receive emails from The Intercept and to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. These agents were prepared to be sprayed down on enemy fields from tanks attached to airplanes over hundreds of miles. The SIS reports indicate that Zlatogorov and Maslakovets conducted some of their research on a so-called Plague Fort - Fort Alexander 1, located at Kronstadt. Nuland did not answer the question head on. Those documents were orders from Ukraines health minister, issued on the second day of the Russian invasion, directing labs in two cities, Kharkiv and Poltava, to destroy collections of bacterial pathogens used for research. And weapons developed in secret Soviet labs are still used to poison Russian dissidents and defectors. 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. 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. The nerve agent is classified as a chemical weapon, not a biological weapon, by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. on about your day, ask yourself: How likely is it that the story you just read would have been produced by a different news outlet if The Intercept hadnt done it? Soviet officials, including Boris Yeltsin, lied about what caused the outbreak until 1992. 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. "It is a milestone for Russia's deception and lies," Thomas-Greenfield shot back. 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. The first group to arrive from Kirov included the new director of the Institute of Hygiene, Major General Nikolai Fillipovich Kopylov. But they dont tell us about it for nothing. The Intercept is an independent nonprofit news outlet. Fox News ??????? 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. Russian officials, and state-controlled Russian television, repeated the allegations again and again throughout 2018. It says material is being destroyed to conceal . The existence of these chimeric viruses programmes was one reason why Alibek defected to the United States in 1992. In July 1937, while planning for a second expedition to the island, Velikanov was arrested by the Soviet security organs and subsequently shot. What if these labs are creating viruses just like COVID-19?. 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. 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. Biden said those accusations were not merely false, but a sign that President Vladimir Putin. ?????? 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. 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. However, citing doubts concerning the United States compliance with the BWC, they subsequently augmented their biowarfare programs. "[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". ???????????? 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. Early programs at the military lab focused on Francisella tularensis (the causative agent of tularaemia). In 1926, at a small laboratory controlled by VOKhIMU, Fishman initiated research on Bacillus anthracis (the causative agent of anthrax). 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 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. He knows therell be severe consequences because of the united Nato front but the point is: its real.. "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 . Imagine you come to a certain office and see an inscription on one of the rooms:Instruction for the cleaner. ??????????? The State of the War. The World Health Organization (WHO) has said it is unaware of activity by Ukraine violating any international treaty, including the ban on biological weapons. ????? 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. Russia called the meeting of the 15-member U.N. Security Council to reassert through its envoy Vassily Nebenzia, without providing evidence, that Ukraine ran biological weapons laboratories with U . We are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces.. Soon after the broadcast, the same documents were also presented to the Russian public on the big screen at a defense ministry briefing led by Konashenkov and Kirillov. 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. Its core staff were sourced from the Kirov BW facility. The new facility became operational in July 1949. RUSSIA could unleash a bioweapon on Ukraine more lethal than Covid from a Ukrainian lab, the former head of the British Army's chemical weapons unit has warned. After seeing the results of international investigations into chemical weapons use in Syria, Russia introduced a resolution to the United Nations last month that would have undermined future independent . It was transferred to the control of the USSR Ministry of Defence in March 1954. Two special ships and two aircraft were assigned to Khatanever for use in tests focused on the dissemination of tularaemia bacteria. [7] The Soviet Union was one, when it deposited its ratification notice. ??????? The documents from Ukraine, Lewitin wrote inan open letterposted on Facebook and Change.org, do not imply any development of biological weapons or even the use of particularly dangerous pathogens in the laboratories. 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. In 1998, Alibek reported that "there was significant discussion of the possible use of monkeypox as a biological weapon instead of smallpox. We were given access to all areas of the site, examined relevant documentation, and interviewed staff, and concluded that the Center demonstrates significant transparency, Lentzosreported in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. This would not have sudden onset, like the movies. 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 . It asserted that "the bacterial option could be successfully used in war" and proposed a plan for the organisation of Soviet military bacteriology. 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. This decree established a secret network of BW institutes within the USSR Ministry of Agriculture. In the summer of 2016, the Russian army participated in the fight against the epidemic of anthrax in Yamal. 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.