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. In 1926, at a small laboratory controlled by VOKhIMU, Fishman initiated research on Bacillus anthracis (the causative agent of anthrax). ", 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. (2012). Unit 68240 of Vladimir. 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. The State of the War. [26], The NunnLugar Cooperative Threat Reduction aimed to secure and dismantle weapons of mass destruction, including the Soviet biological weapons program. The Fox host, whose commentaries have become a staple of Russian state TV, also claimed, wrongly, that Nuland had all but said that theres a military application to this research, that they were working on bioweapons. Carlson then took the bait offered by the Russian militarys reference to coronavirus to make the wild claim that the mundane public health research in Ukraine was identical to dangerous experiments on bat coronaviruses in Wuhan, China, funded by the U.S. before the Covid-19 pandemic. [12], The Soviet Union reportedly had a large biological weapons program enhancing the usefulness of the Marburg virus. Russia has been saying in recent weeks that Ukraine might possess chemical or biological weapons. Aralsk-7 was part of a. 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. "Biological weapons have been outlawed since the BWC entered into force in 1975," she added. The first group to arrive from Kirov included the new director of the Institute of Hygiene, Major General Nikolai Fillipovich Kopylov. Biopreparat pursued offensive research, development, and production of biological agents under the guise of legitimate civil biotechnology research. By ZEKE MILLER March 9, 2022. The issue of compliance by Russia with the BWC has been of concern for many years". [12] (aka Kanatjan Alibekov). Russian officials have repeatedly invoked the fact that the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 on the false pretext that the country had weapons of mass destruction including mobile biological research laboratories as a reason to distrust the Americans now. Imagine you come to a certain office and see an inscription on one of the rooms:Instruction for the cleaner. Conclusion. 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. "He's already used. ??????? ????? Here's what he said: "Few young people: halfdead to give a start. The Russian Bioweapons program would be the most capable, deadliest program in the world. Topline. #??????? [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. This particular flu virus belongs to a strain called H5N1. [31][4], Compliance with the agreement, as well as the fate of the former Soviet bio-agents and facilities, is still mostly undocumented. [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. 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. Nuland did not answer the question head on. His American counterpart, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, warned that Russias claim could be a pretext for launching its own biological weapons attack on Ukraine. Russia was reportedly developing smallpox-based weapons as late as 1988. 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. By 1960, numerous BW research facilities existed throughout the Soviet Union. [21] The Soviet bioweapon effort became a huge program rivaling its considerable investment in nuclear arms. Zombie Attack in Russia REAL(biological wapon) Ataque de Zombies en Rusia REAL (arma biologica).wmv - YouTube AboutPressCopyrightContact usCreatorsAdvertiseDevelopersTermsPrivacyPolicy &. 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. These worked in close collaboration with Soviet military virologists and focused on both animal pathogens such as FMD and exotic zoonotic infections. "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. Slightly more feasible is the "28 Days" scenario, where people go into a state of crazed rage; sort of a super hydrophobia. 2. In the summer of 2016, the Russian army participated in the fight against the epidemic of anthrax in Yamal. 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. There are various accounts regarding the relocation of STI, with official Russian sources indicating that it was initially transferred to Saratov. Russian President Vladmir Putin confirmed that his country is working on the creation of an electromagnetic gun that attacks its target's central nervous system, putting them in what we hope is a. [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. Both America and the Soviet Union experimented with anthrax, which can kill people when inhaled. An outbreak of weaponized smallpox occurred during testing in 1971. 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. 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. "It is a milestone for Russia's deception and lies," Thomas-Greenfield shot back. Yes, and yes. [1] The program began in the 1920s and lasted until at least September 1992 but has possibly been continued by Russia after that. 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. The theory took on a life of its own on social media under the hashtag #usbiolabs, and found a welcome home among rightwing outlets in the US including the War Room podcast of Donald Trumps former adviser Steve Bannon and the Fox News primetime show hosted by Tucker Carlson. 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. 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. Committee on Armed Services. Forty years after the UN General Assembly gave the secretary-general broad authority to investigate allegations of chemical and biological weapons use, that power is still under threat. It says material is being destroyed to conceal . Unsecured bioweapons in a war zone are a bad idea, Carlson told his millions of viewers this week. 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. 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.. Some of the documents cast by Kirillov as evidence of biological weapons research actually concerned the Ukrainian health ministrys cooperation with German experts from BNITM, the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg, to improve surveillance and diagnosis of diseases like dengue fever and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever. On March 13, Gabbard tweeted a video viewed nearly 3 million times, in which she falsely claimed that the public health labs were conducting research on dangerous pathogens and were engaged in that she called dangerous research, including gain of function, similar to the lab in Wuhan where Covid-19 may have originated from.. He knows therell be severe consequences because of the united Nato front but the point is: its real.. 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.. As for the year ahead, a Russian scientist will create a biological weapon that will turn people into zombies, DublinLive reported on Saturday, based on a prophecy warning of the "half-dead to . The samples of Marburg taken from Ustinov's organs were more powerful than the original strain. Its core staff were sourced from the Kirov BW facility. 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. 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. Photo: Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images. In. 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. Buildings at the site belonging to a smallpox institute, subordinate to the People's Commissariat of Health, were transferred to the military facility. 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 . 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. This fake narrative is unfortunately circulating very widely.. But they dont tell us about it for nothing. 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. 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.. Carlsons claims about what Nuland said were quickly translated into Russian by the state broadcaster in Moscow and shared on Twitter by Russian diplomats. Defecting Soviet bioweaponeers such as Vladimir Pasechnik and Colonel Kanatjan Alibekov confirmed that the program had been massive and still existed. [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. It conducted its secret activities at numerous sites across the USSR and employed 30-40,000 people.[20]. [citation needed]. He said there was no chance that the U.S.-funded labs were performing any work on biological weapons. 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. ????? All this suggests that the real lesson Russian officials took from the false American claims of WMD in Iraq is not that such claims need to be backed by solid evidence, but that they can make similarly false claims now, secure in the knowledge that very few people will bother to look at the evidence at all. 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. You know, if theres no evidence right now, that doesnt mean that no evidence exists, Zakharova said. ? The latest claims come just hours . Nulands comments were seized upon by far-right commentators as evidence of a secret plot. The convention was backed by Richard Nixon, who in 1969 also put a stop to the US developing its own offensive biological weapons. Chief among these is Erhardt Geissler who notes that tularaemia is endemic in the region and in any case a large outbreak occurred during the winter of 1941-1942. Carlson distorted Nulands statement into an admission that, in his words, Ukraine has secret bio labs and that falsely asserted that Nuland said whatever theyre doing in those labs is so dangerous and so scary that she is quite concerned that the so-called research material inside those bio labs might fall into the hands of Russian forces.. In July 1937, while planning for a second expedition to the island, Velikanov was arrested by the Soviet security organs and subsequently shot. Here they aimed to develop strains of plague that remained viable when loaded into artillery shells, aerial bombs and other means of dispersal. 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. Because it upsets so many people that I talk to constantly, I have introduced a bill to stop taxpayer funding for bioweapons, Greene said. ???????????? [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. The Russian team is this week reportedly taking samples from a collection of beasts preserved in ice that have been found in recent years.. This would not have sudden onset, like the movies. 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 . 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. 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. 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. Favorov recalled that there was pressure on Soviet scientists to look for potential military applications for their research. 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. 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 . When Steve Rosenberg of the BBC put it to Zakharova in late 2018 that there was no evidence in the documents tracking the Sovaldi project that any biological weapons experiments on humans had been performed in the U.S.-funded lab, the Russian diplomat unwittingly echoed Donald Rumsfelds infamous remarks in 2002 on the lack of evidence for Iraqi WMD, in her reply.