[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. ??????? 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. The Soviet Union's 1991 collapse made Russia the inheritor of the vast majority of the USSR's weapons of mass destruction. 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 . 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. The drug had already been approved by the FDA in 2013. 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. He knows therell be severe consequences because of the united Nato front but the point is: its real.. It asserted that "the bacterial option could be successfully used in war" and proposed a plan for the organisation of Soviet military bacteriology. In 1998, Alibek reported that "there was significant discussion of the possible use of monkeypox as a biological weapon instead of smallpox. 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. 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. Ukraine war: Fact-checking Russia's biological weapons claims 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 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. Russia Is Lying About Evidence of Bioweapons Labs in Ukraine, Russian Fears are growing Vladimir Put Putin could unleash deadly virus from seized Ukraine lab - and then Russia claims US tested bioweapons in Georgia - DW - 10/04/2018 The Russian Biological Weapons Program: Vanished or Disappeared? Biopreparat pursued offensive research, development, and production of biological agents under the guise of legitimate civil biotechnology research. 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. Two years earlier, the same nerve agent had been used in a botched attempt to murderSkripal in England. 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. Russia's bioweapon conspiracy theory finds support in US Those records were obtained and made public by a former head of Georgian intelligence living in exile in Russia, Igor Giorgadze. Russian officials, and state-controlled Russian television, repeated the allegations again and again throughout 2018. The Russian biological weapons program in 2022 By Robert Petersen October 5, 2022 On February 24, Russia launched a war of conquest against Ukraine after it had already illegally annexed Crimea in 2014 and waged war for eight years in the Donbas. "Few young people: half-dead to give a start," Nostradamus mentioned in his writing. According to Alibek, in 1928, the Revolutionary Military Council signed a decree about the weaponization of typhus. A state lab in Russia's Siberia is beginning research into prehistoric viruses preserved in the remains of animals found in melting permafrost. The threat reduction assisted post-Soviet states in containing and destroying the pathogens in Soviet labs. 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. Our group observed nothing out of the ordinary, or that we wouldnt expect to see in a legitimate facility of this sort.. Its core staff were sourced from the Kirov BW facility. The development was conducted in Vector Institute under the leadership of Dr. Ustinov who was accidentally killed by the virus. 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. 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 . 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. and the kicker is it will eventually leave us extinct. The new facility became operational in July 1949. (11 October 2013). Tucker Carlson took the bait offered by the Russian militarys reference to coronavirus. 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. 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. What if these labs are creating viruses just like COVID-19?. 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. 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. To start with, these were not clinical trials of Sovaldi in Georgia in 2015. Theory About U.S.-Funded Bioweapons Labs in Ukraine Is Unfounded If you're dead, you're immobile and you rot. 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. At this time the country only possessed a single facility focused on viruses, the Moscow-based D.I. The latest claims come just hours . [31][4], Compliance with the agreement, as well as the fate of the former Soviet bio-agents and facilities, is still mostly undocumented. 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. It has also shown a willingness to. The Lab-Made Virus the U.S. Fears Could Be Made Into a Biological Weapon Sverdlovsk bioweapons production facility (Military Compound 19). His American counterpart, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, warned that Russias claim could be a pretext for launching its own biological weapons attack on Ukraine. Russia's Defense Ministry says the United States appears to be running a clandestine biological weapons lab in the country of Georgia, allegedly flouting international rules and posing a direct . Over the next decade or so, dual-use BW production plants were created at Berdsk, Omutninsk, Penza and Kurgan. In addition to the threat of pathogens held in Ukrainian labs leaking or falling into the hands of Russian forces, there is the threat of Russia launching its own biological weapons attack. We dont have ads, so we depend on our members 35,000 and counting to help us hold the powerful to account. [1] The program began in the 1920s and lasted until at least September 1992 but has possibly been continued by Russia after that. CDC: Prepare For 2021 'Zombie Apocalypse' As - TheCount.com [12] However, a number of prominent scholars have disputed Alibek's version of events. pic.twitter.com/LiFrprWAUt. It is Russia that has long maintained a biological weapon program in violation of international law.. [1] Annualized production capacity for weaponized smallpox, for example, was 90 to 100 tons. 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. 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. Zombie apocalypse According to Nostradamus, a scientist from Russia will create a biological weapon that create a virus that will turn people into zombies. Spearheaded by the Vector State Research Centre of. ??? #??????? "[30] Yeltsin promised to end the Russian bio-weapons program and to convert its facilities for benevolent scientific and medical purposes. ?????????? [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. Under Putin, Russia has a biological weapons program, one that it has clearly used to target its opponents. Two special ships and two aircraft were assigned to Khatanever for use in tests focused on the dissemination of tularaemia bacteria. He said there was no chance that the U.S.-funded labs were performing any work on biological weapons. UN Security Council denies Russia call for bio weapons probe So the Pentagon-funded projects, Favorov said, were focused on how to identify pathogens, how to introduce biosafety to all these labs which were working with these pathogens anyway. In many cases, Favorov added, I believe that Russians were kind of jealous that, you know, somebodys helping their used-to-be Russian colonies to organize better laboratories.. "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. Russia and chemical weapons: What you need to know | CNN Politics In August 1925, he was appointed the first head of the Red Army's Military-Chemical Directorate (Voenno-khimicheskoe upravlenie, abbreviated to VOKhIMU). Fact check: CDC's zombie apocalypse page offers general disaster tips The Russian military, Lewitin told Aronova, had simply lied about what the Ukrainian documents meant. Two major Japanese offensive BW installations at Pingfang and Changchun were overrun by the Red Army. At some point around the 25 September, the facility was evacuated and the buildings partially destroyed. 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 . You know, if theres no evidence right now, that doesnt mean that no evidence exists, Zakharova said. Ukraines ambassador to the world body, Sergiy Kyslytsya, called the idea being advanced by Russia a bunch of insane delirium. 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. [6] Upon ratification of the Geneva Protocol, several countries made reservations regarding its applicability and use in retaliation. His back is against the wall, said Biden, mentioning the false claims about US-funded biolabs in Ukraine. This particular flu virus belongs to a strain called H5N1. Russia claims US is running a secret bio weapons lab in Georgia [1] [2] 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. 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. 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. Ukraine does operate biological laboratories that receive US funding. 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. 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. Scientists from the. [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. The allegations were quickly amplified by China, which supported the claims during the UN security council debate. 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. ), 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. Around 100 personnel from Velikanov's Biotechnical Institute participated in the experiments. "[24], In 1989 the defector Vladimir Pasechnik convinced the British that the Soviets had genetically engineered a strain of Yersinia pestis to resist antibiotics. Russian scientists to 'extract zombie viruses from dead bodies of Written by Tuan Nguyen, Contributor on April 8, 2012. [26], The NunnLugar Cooperative Threat Reduction aimed to secure and dismantle weapons of mass destruction, including the Soviet biological weapons program. And those who have read it will say: Well, yes, maybe there are no dangerous pathogens in these documents. Biden said those accusations were not merely false, but a sign that President Vladimir Putin. Robert Mackey[emailprotected]theintercept.com@RobertMackey. Nostradamus predicts famine and a zombie virus for 2021 - 9Honey 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. Nostradamus' 2021 predictions: From world-ending Asteroids and ZOMBIES [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. 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. No Hyperbole! The Zombie Threat Is Very Real!!! - The Common Sense Show 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. The visits occurred in January 1991. Nuland did not answer the question head on. 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). 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. Hes already used chemical weapons in the past, and we should be careful of whats about to come. [25] This triggered George H. W. Bush and Margaret Thatcher to pressure Gorbachev into opening for inspection several of his facilities. 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. ", 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. Fear and Loathing in Moscow: The Russian biological weapons program in 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. His decree was, however, not obeyed. The list contains only strains common to microbiological and even more so to epidemiological laboratories., More than 800 signatories endorsed Lewitins letter when it was transformed into a petition from Russian biologists urging Russian journalists to stop repeating the governments false, absolutely groundless and hatred-inciting statements about allegedly found evidence of the development of biological weapons in Ukrainian laboratories.. 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 principal architect of the Soviet Union's first military biological programme was Yakov Moiseevich Fishman[ru]. [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. Here's what he said: "Few young people: halfdead to give a start. The Soviet Union continued the development and mass production of offensive biological weapons, despite having signed the 1972 BWC. Russia Continues To Lead On Chemical And Biological Warfare Military 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 State of the War. ?????????? Russia 'researching doomsday weapons such as unleashing - The Sun The WHO has worked in Ukraine for several years helping bio labs improve safety and security, so it knows what it is talking about. Biodefense: Worldwide Threats and Countermeasure Efforts for the Department of Defense: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Intelligence, Emerging Threats and Capabilities of the Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, One Hundred Thirteenth Congress, First Session, Hearing Held October 11, 2013. p. 34. The kind of reporting we do is essential to democracy, but it is not easy, cheap, or profitable. Ivanovskii Institute of Virology. How Russia's false biolab story was echoed by the U.S. far right : NPR Soviet officials, including Boris Yeltsin, lied about what caused the outbreak until 1992. 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. U.N. says no evidence to back Russian claim of Ukraine biological By ZEKE MILLER March 9, 2022. J Miller, S Engelberg, and W Broad (2001). Committee on Armed Services. 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. Its origins remain obscure, but it's possible that the deadly cache was manufactured at Compound 19, a facility near the Russian city of Sverdlovsk, now Yekatarinburg. Russian scientists who have looked at the documents Russia calls proof of bioweapons labs in Ukraine say there is no evidence for such claims. 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. Zombies, asteroids and scholarship: Nostradamus predicts 2021
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