Status And Development Of US Military Biological ProjectsSouth Front

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Originally appeared at Foreign Military Review #3 2019, translated by AlexD exclusively for SouthFront

The U.S. military and political leadership (MPL) has consistently declared in international forums the punctual implementation of the “Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction” (hereinafter, the Convention or BTWC). The convention was approved by the UN General Assembly in 1971, entered into force in 1975, and is open-ended.

According to foreign and Russian biologists, a disadvantage of the BTWC is the lack of a control and inspection mechanism for the implementation of its main provisions by the participating countries. At the same time, the U.S. MPL is avoiding the participation in the development of this mechanism and signing the relevant protocol proposed by Russia. In addition, the American leadership, through its extensive biological-military activities, had deliberately committed serious violations of the Convention, which should be considered as a departure from international law.

The results of the analysis of foreign and Russian information materials, statements of former Minister of State Security of Georgia I. Giorgadze and assessments of annual reports of the U.S. State Department by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation allow to draw conclusions about systematic violations of the basic provisions of the Convention and the creation of biological (bacteriological) weapons in this country by the U.S. leadership.

The medical and biological activities of the U.S. military department on the perimeter of the Russian borders pose a serious threat to the security of Russia and other states. The locations of biological laboratories, according to foreign and Russian experts, have been chosen so that many of them are located in areas adjacent to Russia and China and are a constant source of biological threats to these states. In the former republics of the USSR, the Pentagon has funded the operation and development of new microbiological laboratories. More than 30 U.S.-controlled laboratories with a high level of biological protection are currently being upgraded, which is also confirmed by official UN data. Their capabilities make it possible to conduct a full range of studies with agents of extremely dangerous infectious diseases.

The content of most of the work indicates that new types of biological attack agents with predetermined pathogenic properties may be produced.

According to foreign information sources, basic U.S. Central Reference Laboratories (CRLs), supplemented by a network of zonal stations, operate in the Ukraine and Georgia. In addition, under an agreement between its Ministry of Health and the U.S. Department of Defense, the Ukraine has laboratories for the study of highly dangerous infections. There is one laboratory in each of the cities of Kiev, Odessa, Kherson, Ternopil, Uzhgorod, Vinnitsa, Kharkov and Lugansk, two laboratories in Dnepropetrovsk and three in Lvov.

Georgia has a number of biological facilities controlled by the Pentagon: the National Center for Infectious Disease Control and the Institute of Microbiology, Virology and Bacteriophages; the Richard Lugar Laboratory for Public Health Research on the outskirts of Tbilisi (Alekseevka village); and modernised regional sanitary epidemiological stations.

The head of Rospotrebnadzor, chief state sanitary doctor of Russia Anna Popova, in late 2018 said that the Pentagon planned to organise a laboratory in Simferopol under the guise of a medical centre to conduct experiments on people and creation of biological weapons. This is confirmed by the discovery of 46 rodent internal organ samples, 104 ectoparasite pools, and 105 human blood serum samples prepared for shipment to the United States on the peninsula in the former Soviet anti-plague station.

Hepatitis A has caused an unexplained epidemic in South Eastern Ukraine, where most of the Pentagon’s biolabs are located. In 2011, 33 people were infected with cholera in the Ukraine. The epidemic is repeated in 2014, when more than 800 Ukrainians were diagnosed with the dangerous disease. In 2015 in Nikolaev more than 100 new cases of cholera infections were registered.

According to her, American laboratories located near Russia’s borders in the post-Soviet space can artificially change viruses. Thus, in the summer of 2018 a group of Russian tourists returned from Georgia in serious condition due to an acute intestinal infection.

Having studied the pathogen, Rospotrebnadzor scientists found out that such variant of the pathogen is not described and is not presented among the known data. According to their data, insects capable of transmitting dangerous viruses to people are being brought to Georgia by drones from the USA. The well-known American centre R. Lugar in Georgia, which was previously accused of testing toxic chemicals on local residents under the guise of treatment, is engaged in this work.

Former UN member of the Biological Weapons Commission Ihor Nikulin said the Americans in the Ukraine are also testing questionable vaccines. In recent years, outbreaks of measles, hepatitis, tuberculosis, rabies and other infectious diseases have increased in the country. Only in 2017, tens of thousands of Ukrainians died from infections. Meanwhile, viruses are often spread using drones and insects. The implementation of the U.S. programme “Allied Insects” began in 2016.

The number of biological laboratories built or upgraded by the United States in the former Soviet Union is increasing. There are ten of them in Kazakhstan, the same number in Georgia, eight in Azerbaijan and seven in Armenia.

Russia is almost completely surrounded by biological laboratories.

All over the world, Washington has 200 laboratories. It is possible that the outbreak of Ebola in Africa, which took the lives of 10 thousand people, is associated with the Americans’ experiments.

It is important to note that Washington declares exclusively the civilian purpose of the activities of these facilities, allegedly in the interests of ensuring the biological security of the republics. It is stated that, with the participation of American military biologists, these laboratories conduct research on pathogens that are particularly dangerous.

According to foreign and Russian experts, these laboratories are used for purposes hostile to Russia and other countries. There is an increase in uncontrolled covert and sudden intervention in the field of biosecurity of states with the following tasks: putting under control the sanitary and epidemiological situation in the post-Soviet republics and the work carried out in them with pathogens; data collection on infectious diseases and export of national collections with strains of pathogens that can fight the effects of vaccines and are resistant to antibiotics; collecting information about territorial microorganisms to create a new generation of highly effective offensive biological weapons against Russia, Iran and China; conducting sabotage operations aimed at causing damage to the economy (destruction of livestock, discrediting state products on world markets, etc.) and human potential as a result of reduced immunity and ability to reproduce; testing on the ground of biological agents, increasing their virulence, tracking the ways and methods of their distribution; increasing the dependence of Russia, China and Iran on the products of the Western pharmaceutical industry in order to develop medicines for diseases artificially synthesized or modified using the CRL network and circumventing the restrictions regulated by the articles of the BTWC.

The Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan handed over their collections of pathogens of dangerous diseases and combat strains of microorganisms created in the former USSR to the Americans.

The Pentagon’s research into ethnically based differences in people’s susceptibility to dangerous diseases is dangerous. This opens up the possibility of obtaining (by genetic modification the forms of pathogenic microorganisms) such biological affective agents, to which the population of the Russian Federation and other countries will have no natural immunity, and the available medical means of protection may prove ineffective.

It is known that the Pentagon has repeatedly sent viable anthrax agents to 195 recipients in 12 countries where well-known laboratories have been built in recent years in violation of all accepted standards. For example, a “live” recipe was intentionally sent to the Republic of Korea as part of an alleged test of the integrated biological assessment system, and the US subsequently stated that the mailing was made in error.

The specifics of their creation and functioning are confirmed by the hostile aims and objectives of these laboratories:

– All facilities are being built at the Pentagon’s expense, not the ministries of health of the states. According to foreign experts, the financing of their activities in the period from 2017 to 2019 will amount to about 1 billion dollars, and only in 2019, in accordance with the budget request of the US administration, more than 197 million dollars will be allocated for the implementation of research and military-technical projects. Such significant costs can be justified by the possibility of placing expensive dual-use equipment.

– The experience of using such facilities by the Americans shows that they are removed from national control and operate in a closed mode.

– Laboratories are staffed by foreign personnel with diplomatic immunity.

– The directors of the facilities, as a rule, are appointed persons loyal to the Pentagon’s military or intelligence personnel.

– The CRLs are located in cities or in close proximity to major cities (Odessa, Kharkov, Almaty), near seaports (Odessa), airports (Tbilisi), or in earthquake-prone areas (Almaty). From the point of view of security their positions are extremely vulnerable.

Data published by former Minister of State Security of Georgia I. Giogadze on the activities of the United States at the R. Lugar Center for Public Health Research received an important international response. It should be emphasized that these materials were thoroughly studies by the command of the Russian Armed Forces and used at a briefing of the Russian Ministry of Defence in October 2018.

According to the materials of I. Giorgadze’s website “Georgia yesterday, today, tomorrow”, in 2018, a new eight-story administrative and laboratory building was built on the territory adjacent to the R. Lugar centre. Two floors of the new building are completely dedicated to the medical research unit, which is a branch of the W. Reed U.S. Army Research Institute. It is known that this military unit of the army is engaged in the study of particularly dangerous infectious diseases. The American and Georgian authorities are taking measures to conceal the true nature and direction of projects implemented in the centre. The Pentagon is trying to introduce the same camouflaged military medical and biological facilities in other republics of the former USSR.

The documents indicate that Washington’s priority research list includes potential biological weapons agents: agent of tularemia, anthrax, brucellosis, dengue fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever and other diseases transmitted by blood-sucking arthropods. The Pentagon is particularly interested in atypical forms of plague, which are being searched for in pockets throughout Georgia, including in the immediate vicinity of Russia.

According to I. Giorgadze’s data, Georgian specialists are restricted in moving around the centre, do not have the right to get acquainted with American documents, and do not have information about the Pentagon’s closed laboratory developments. At the same time, US military biologists working at the centre have diplomatic immunity. For them, the notification nature of transporting biomaterials through deep channels is implemented without checks and declaring them before local supervisory authorities.

Thus, this protection allows the members of the Armed Forces of the United States to solve problems and to fulfill the orders of its government in circumvention of the Georgian legislation. In addition, Washington secured financial support from London and Berlin for the R. Lugar centre, facilitated its partnerships with major scientific research institutions such as the UK DEO’s Science and Technology Laboratory and the Institute of Microbiology of the Bundeswehr, as well as the R. Koch Institute, B. Nocht Tropical Medicine and F. Leffler Veterinary Medicine (all in Germany).

Giorgadze’s information draws attention to the use of unmanned aerial vehicles by the Americans to spread infected insects in the air and various types of capsules for the delivery of chemical and biological formations. The possibility of equipping the capsules with tranquilisers, poisonous, radioactive and narcotic substances and pathogens of infectious diseases is shown.

Materials on the results of the conducted research on the impact of an unknown drug on Georgian citizens, which resulted in the death of more than 160 people were made public. There are reasons to believe that the R. Lugar centre has conducted tests of a highly toxic chemical preparation or biological agent with high lethality.

The published data point out that the collection and export abroad of biological materials of Russian citizens with undeclared purposes represents a threat to the security of the Russian Federation.

As part of the Genographic Project, American companies collected clinical material on monoethnoses from the North Caucasus, the Far East and the Ural regions.

Thus, the U.S. military and pollical leadership, violating the basic provisions of the BTWC, is developing its military and biological activities and, under the guise of implementing protective or other peaceful research, is continuing to build its military and biological potential. Contrary to its international obligations, the U.S. has retained national legislation that allows for work in the field of bacteriological (biological) weapons. In particular, the ratification of the 1925 Geneva protocol “For the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare” by the United States attached a number of notes allowing the retaliatory use of chemical and toxin weapons.

According to the U.S. Federal Act “Uniting and Strengthening American by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act” (the “Patriot Act”), research in the fileld of creating bacteriological (biological) weapons is allowed with the authorisation of the American government. At the same time, participants in such research are not criminally liable for developing such weapons. The While House, offering supposedly charitable assistance in the sanitary and epidemiological field, concurrently increases the potential for covert and sudden intervention in the development of the situation in the field of biosecurity, not only in the post-Soviet states, but also far beyond their borders.

In conclusion, it is important to cite the statements made by the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, at the XV^th annual meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club, after reviewing the information materials on the implementation of the BTWC by the United States: “Reports of the development of biological weapons are alarming. I can’t judge how reliable the data of the former Minister of State Security of Georgia is. These developments are very dangerous and are associated with the latest advances in genetics. We can talk about drugs that selectively affect a person in accordance with their belonging to a certain ethnic group. If someone is going to develop such things, they should understand that others will do it as well. To prevent these problems, the international community should sit down at the negotiating table and develop common rules of conduct in this extremely sensitive area.”