There are various accounts regarding the relocation of STI, with official Russian sources indicating that it was initially transferred to Saratov. In the 1980s and 1990s, many of these agents were genetically altered to resist heat, cold, and antibiotics. The kind of reporting we do is essential to democracy, but it is not easy, cheap, or profitable. 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. Two special ships and two aircraft were assigned to Khatanever for use in tests focused on the dissemination of tularaemia bacteria. The White House on Wednesday warned that Russia could use "chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine" or could create a "false flag operation" using them, after the Kremlin accused the U.S. of . [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. 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. Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya held up images of pregnant women injured by Russian shelling of a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine. 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. "I'm not . This work was allegedly initiated in the 1920s at the Leningrad Military Medical Academy under the control of OGPU (see above). 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. What if these labs are creating viruses just like COVID-19?. 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/. [1] [2] Written by Tuan Nguyen, Contributor on April 8, 2012. By way of example, Lewitin, who has a Ph.D. in genetics, pointed to the absolutely wild idea of the existence of special DNA of the Slavs, which could be used to target ethnic Russians with a biological weapon. After US intelligence accurately predicted Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it's disturbing that Americans now fear Russia is preparing to use chemical weapons during the conflict. ??????? 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 . Hi Dave I was just reading another article called codename Satan's Poker and yes it deals with errant strain of vaccine to give to everyone isreal has already vaccinated 60 and older.and get the world population vaccinated .I have a actually seen a similar vehicle here some years ago around 2015 in North Houston though is was a joke but had CDC . The Russian Federation is known to possess or have possessed three types of weapons of mass destruction: nuclear weapons, biological weapons, and chemical weapons.It is one of the five nuclear-weapon states recognized under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.. Russia possesses a total of 5,977 nuclear warheads as of 2022, the largest stockpile of nuclear warheads in the . 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. Finally, Russia has a track record of accusing the West of the very crimes that Russia itself is perpetrating. A state lab in Russia's Siberia is beginning research into prehistoric viruses preserved in the remains of animals found in melting permafrost. [17] The new military institute later pursued major programmes focused on variola virus and viral haemorrhagic fevers. 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 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. 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. In the later summer of 1942, in the face of the German offensive to capture Stalingrad, there was a second evacuation of STI, which was eventually permanently relocated to Kirov, located some 896 kilometres north-east of Moscow on the Vyatka river. Maria Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, said that the documents made public by Giorgadze again raise questions about the U.S. militarys true aims and objectives in Georgia. The documents Giorgadze publicized were described as a bombshell on Russian state television, in a report that quoted a former Russian military biologist speculating that Georgians were being used as guinea pigs in biological weapons experiments. It says material is being destroyed to conceal . These weapons could be . In a statement sent to The Intercept, the institute rejected the Russian claims. 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. [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. ", 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 Russian team is this week reportedly taking samples from a collection of beasts preserved in ice that have been found in recent years.. 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. Robert Mackey[emailprotected]theintercept.com@RobertMackey. The BNITM has never and will never work directly or indirectly on bio weapons, the statement said. The development was conducted in Vector Institute under the leadership of Dr. Ustinov who was accidentally killed by the virus. Alibek maintains that "Soviet leaders from Leonid Brezhnev to Mikhail Gorbachev personally authorized prohibited development, testing, and production efforts [and] cites several Gorbachev decrees stepping up the pace of work within the biological weapons complex, and directing the creation of mobile production facilities so that inspectors could not uncover the program. 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. Russia has claimed without any evidence that biological weapons are being developed in laboratories in Ukraine with support from the United States. This was later to manifest itself as a key feature of the subsequent Biopreparat programme". Running parallel to the work underway at Vlasikha, BW research was also being pursued in an institution controlled by the state security apparatus. 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 . At some point around the 25 September, the facility was evacuated and the buildings partially destroyed. [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. These worked in close collaboration with Soviet military virologists and focused on both animal pathogens such as FMD and exotic zoonotic infections. At least one of the pilots was a Russian Foreign Intelligence Service officer". The convention was backed by Richard Nixon, who in 1969 also put a stop to the US developing its own offensive biological weapons. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Kremlin spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters: "We can conclude that in Ukrainian laboratories close to our borders, components of biological weapons were being developed. The 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. 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. Fears are growing Vladimir Put According to Alibek, in 1928, the Revolutionary Military Council signed a decree about the weaponization of typhus. [1] The program began in the 1920s and lasted until at least September 1992 but has possibly been continued by Russia after that. When the project started, Eurasianet reported, Sovaldi was administered to 5,800 Georgian hepatitis patients with severe complications like advanced liver fibrosis and cirrhosis. Because the first patients to get the drug were the sickest, it is not surprising thatdozens of them died before the drug could clear the virus from their system. In 1992, a Trilateral Agreement was signed with the United States and the United Kingdom promising to end biological weapons programs and convert facilities to benevolent purposes, but compliance with the agreementand the fate of the former Soviet bio-agents and facilitiesis still mostly undocumented. 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.. [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. 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. The fact that the Pentagon has provided much of the funding for labs built by the United States in former Soviet states also fuels suspicion in Russia, and elsewhere. [34], In the 1990s, specimens of deadly bacteria and viruses were stolen from western laboratories and delivered by Aeroflot planes to support the Russian biological weapons program. German intelligence independently identified the secret BW programme allegedly managed by Zlatogorov and Maslakovets. 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. Around 100 personnel from Velikanov's Biotechnical Institute participated in the experiments. This particular flu virus belongs to a strain called H5N1. 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. The drug had already been approved by the FDA in 2013. 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. ????????? Konashenkovadditionally stated as a matter of fact something for which none of the documents presented at the briefing backs up: that American-financed studies of bird, bat, and reptile pathogens planned for later this year would include experiments on the ability of the animals to be used to covertly transmit weaponized African swine fever and anthrax. 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. Russia says it has uncovered a military biological weapons programme in Ukraine, claims described by the US as "absurd propaganda". 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 . Ukraine has biological research facilities, she said, adding that there was concern that Russian forces were trying to gain control of the labs. Biblical famine As well as a deadly zombie virus, Earth apparently 'will be hit with a famine of biblical proportions.' This week, speaking to business leaders in Washington, Joe Biden warned that Vladimir Putin could use biological weapons. The anti-corruption activist Alexey Navalny survived an attempted assassination with the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok in Russia in 2020. [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. The biolab narrative "exploded on social media right . A report on the briefing from the Russian government news agency Tass included this conspiratorial aside about Sovaldi, which is used to treat chronic hepatitis C infections: Kirillov noted that the U.S.-based Gilead Sciences, in which former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is a key shareholder, manufactured the drug.. 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 . He points to evidence that infected rodents were the key to the large-scale outbreaks and that inhalationary tularaemia may have resulted from inhalation of dust from contaminated straw in matresses. 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. Ukraine does operate biological laboratories that receive US funding. Yes, and yes. 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. 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. When Russian news outlets repeated these claims, Lewitin,the veteran Russian biologist, wrote that they had been duped into printing what he called deliberately false information,fed to them by the military, about what was in the documents. 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. Conclusion. [1] Annualized production capacity for weaponized smallpox, for example, was 90 to 100 tons. It breeds and spreads among birds, but on rare occasion, it can infect . 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. Project Factor was the codename for the budget to develop microbial weapons with new properties of high virulence, improved stability, and new clinical syndromes. 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. (2012). By the following year, the idea that the U.S. operated biological weapons labs on Russias borders was treated as an undeniable fact on Russian talk shows. Zombie Attack in Russia REAL(biological wapon) Ataque de Zombies en Rusia REAL (arma biologica).wmv - YouTube AboutPressCopyrightContact usCreatorsAdvertiseDevelopersTermsPrivacyPolicy &. 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. 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]. [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. You know, if theres no evidence right now, that doesnt mean that no evidence exists, Zakharova said. Russia to Witness 'Zombie' Anthrax Outbreak? "[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". The State of the War. 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. 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. 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. Western officials and open-source researchers offered convincing evidence that both attempted murders were carried out by Russian intelligence agents. The Russian governments claim that the biological labs funded by the U.S. were experimenting with dangerous pathogens,thoughdebunked by the Russian biologists, was echoed by influential voices on Fox News like Tucker Carlson and Tulsi Gabbard. 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. For instance, after Victoria Nuland, a State Department official, said that the U.S. was working with Ukraine to prevent biological research materials in Ukrainian labs from being seized by Russian forces, Carlson and Gabbard amplified the false claim made by the Russian military that the routine public health research in those labs was dangerous. The statement of the official representative of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, Igor Konashenkov, in combination with the documents attached to this statement, produces just such an impression., Thats how propaganda works, he added. ?? These are the first 100 units of a gene in an influenza virus. The latest claims come just hours . [1] The program began in the 1920s and lasted until at least September 1992 but has possibly been continued by Russia after that. [citation needed]. The Sverdlovsk facility launched a scientific programme in 1951 which focused on botulinum toxin.[10]. In August 1958, the latter created a new Scientific-Research Technical Bureau (NITB), the prime task of which was to create covert dual-use BW facilities at a number of pharmaceutical and microbiological enterprises. 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. When Gabbard was criticized for saying things about the type of work done in the labs for which there is no evidence, Carlson defended her in a statement that echoed the false claims made by Russian officials. 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. 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. The destruction of the pathogens listed on orders sent to the labs, Konashenkov said, was a desperate effort to conceal any traces of the military-biological program financed by the U.S. Department of Defense in Ukraine., At a defense ministry briefing in Moscow the next day, Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov the head of the Russian militarys radiation, chemical, and biological protection force displayed these documents on a huge screen. At this time the country only possessed a single facility focused on viruses, the Moscow-based D.I. Simply not true, I guarantee you.. [12], The Soviet Union reportedly had a large biological weapons program enhancing the usefulness of the Marburg virus. The paperwork even indicated that some of the strains had been purchased from Russian labs. 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. Speaking at a press briefing in Moscow, Kirillov claimed that a shipment of chemical . 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. The Russian Biological Weapons Program: Vanished or Disappeared? Nakamitsu pointed to the Biological Weapons Convention, which has prohibited the development and use of biological weapons since 1975. It is Russia that has active chemical and biological weapons programs and is in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention and Biological Weapons Convention. Tucker Carlson took the bait offered by the Russian militarys reference to coronavirus. He said there was no chance that the U.S.-funded labs were performing any work on biological weapons. An outbreak of weaponized smallpox occurred during testing in 1971. [36], As of 2021, the United States "assesses that the Russian Federation (Russia) maintains an offensive BW program and is in violation of its obligation under Articles I and II of the BWC. 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. That possibility leaves even seasoned experts rattled.
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