It says material is being destroyed to conceal . Operating under the codename "Ekologiya" (Ecology), the new network incorporated three virology facilities. "I'm not . 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. Biblical famine As well as a deadly zombie virus, Earth apparently 'will be hit with a famine of biblical proportions.' The principal architect of the Soviet Union's first military biological programme was Yakov Moiseevich Fishman[ru]. A state lab in Russia's Siberia is beginning research into prehistoric viruses preserved in the remains of animals found in melting permafrost. Russia has been saying in recent weeks that Ukraine might possess chemical or biological weapons. 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. Project Factor was the codename for the budget to develop microbial weapons with new properties of high virulence, improved stability, and new clinical syndromes. 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. 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. How many covert wars, miscarriages of justice, and dystopian technologies would remain hidden if our reporters werent on the beat? Russians test a gun that turns people into zombies Russian President Vladimir Putin says a mind-control gun may be ready within a decade. The Russian team is this week reportedly taking samples from a collection of beasts preserved in ice that have been found in recent years.. 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. 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. Running parallel to the work underway at Vlasikha, BW research was also being pursued in an institution controlled by the state security apparatus. Nation in Danger of 'Re-releasing Deadly Spores' Leaked in 1979 The incident that took place in 1979 claimed the lives of around 66 people according. 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. The Leningrad Military Medical Academy began cultivating typhus in chicken embryos. [17] The new military institute later pursued major programmes focused on variola virus and viral haemorrhagic fevers. This week, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria . At that time about 100 people died from infected beef. This particular flu virus belongs to a strain called H5N1. The threat of chemical and nuclear warfare loomed large over most militaries during the Cold War. The Russian Biological Weapons Program: Vanished or Disappeared? [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 paperwork even indicated that some of the strains had been purchased from Russian labs. 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 1930, Velikanov was placed in command of a new facility, the Red Army's Vaccine-Sera Laboratory in Vlasikha, around 30 miles to the west of Moscow. It asserted that "the bacterial option could be successfully used in war" and proposed a plan for the organisation of Soviet military bacteriology. [19], In 1953 the management of the Soviet BW programme was assigned to the USSR Ministry of Defence's Fifteenth Administration. 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. 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. ?????????? 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. That quickly made it a priority for the U.S. to help secure dangerous pathogens, particularly in some of the impoverished former Soviet states where anthrax is naturally occurring but had also been used in biological weapons experiments before the collapse of the USSR in 1991. Two special ships and two aircraft were assigned to Khatanever for use in tests focused on the dissemination of tularaemia bacteria. Fears are growing Vladimir Put 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. 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. Speaking at a press briefing in Moscow, Kirillov claimed that a shipment of chemical . "Few young people: half-dead to give a start," Nostradamus mentioned in his writing. Unfortunately, a bioweapon made using an artificial virus has recently become feasible, making the possibility of a zombie virus seem real. 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.. 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. The latest claims come just hours . The Soviet Union conducted experimentations with the Marburg virus in aerosol form to transform it into a strategic-operational biological weapon. [15], On the 22 June 1941, Nazi Germany commenced Operation Barbarossa and invaded the Soviet Union along a 2,900-kilometre front. 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.. They are working with the remains of extinct woolly . [2], "Pokrov, Berdsk and Omutninsk all revealed evidence of biological activity since 1975, such as large-scale production in hardened facilities, aerosol test chambers, excessive containment levels for current activity and accommodation for weapons-filling lines."[4]. 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. ? [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. Lewitin offered a more detailed debunking of the evidence in an interview with Marina Aronova, a correspondent for Siberia.Realities, a regional news outlet of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which is funded by the U.S. government. 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. J Miller, S Engelberg, and W Broad (2001). 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. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. These agents were prepared to be sprayed down on enemy fields from tanks attached to airplanes over hundreds of miles. At this time the country only possessed a single facility focused on viruses, the Moscow-based D.I. ), 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. And chances are . (Most of that long thread was translated into English by Ilya Lozovsky, an editor at the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. Carlsons claims about what Nuland said were quickly translated into Russian by the state broadcaster in Moscow and shared on Twitter by Russian diplomats. 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. 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. Defecting Soviet bioweaponeers such as Vladimir Pasechnik and Colonel Kanatjan Alibekov confirmed that the program had been massive and still existed. "[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". Scott A. Miller/Getty Images CNN An explosion has caused a fire at a Russian. 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 . It breeds and spreads among birds, but on rare occasion, it can infect . However, citing doubts concerning the United States compliance with the BWC, they subsequently augmented their biowarfare programs. The scheme was originally known as Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) but is now more commonly referred to as biological engagement. "Biological weapons have been outlawed since the BWC entered into force in 1975," she added. For the past six years, the BNITM has instead been working with public health officials in Ukraine to investigate seroprevalence, the existence of antibodies, on various infectious diseases occurring in this region. Slightly more feasible is the "28 Days" scenario, where people go into a state of crazed rage; sort of a super hydrophobia. That possibility leaves even seasoned experts rattled. The key hub of the Soviet BW programme at this time was the Scientific-Research Institute of Epidemiology and Hygiene located in Kirov. 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. ?????? Spearheaded by the Vector State Research Centre of. Early programs at the military lab focused on Francisella tularensis (the causative agent of tularaemia). 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. According to fox13now, because one of the . [25], It has been reported that Russia made smallpox available to Saddam Hussein in the beginning of the 1990s. Zlatogorov was in fact one of the world's leading authorities on pneumonic plague and had studied 40 strains of plague bacilli from around the world. Russia's willingness to use weapons of mass destruction There is no doubt that Russia has a long history of producing chemical and biological weapons. 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 development of new nerve agents during the 1940s, as well as advanced delivery systems later on. 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 . Later that same summer, Leonid Moiseevich Khatanever, the new director of the Biotechnical Institute and an expert on Francisella tularensis (the causative agent of tularaemia), led a second expedition to Vozrozhdeniya. 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. He also alleges that human experimentation occurred with typhus, glanders and melioidosis in the Solovetsky camp. [6] Upon ratification of the Geneva Protocol, several countries made reservations regarding its applicability and use in retaliation. Over the next decade or so, dual-use BW production plants were created at Berdsk, Omutninsk, Penza and Kurgan. Leitenberg, Milton and Raymond A. Zilinskas (2012). 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. [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. [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. In December 1949, the military figures identified by the Soviets as participating in the Japanese BW programme were put on trial in Khabarovsk. 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. Answer (1 of 10): Zombies are impossible. 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. 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. Finally, Russia has a track record of accusing the West of the very crimes that Russia itself is perpetrating. 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. The WHO has worked in Ukraine for several years helping bio labs improve safety and security, so it knows what it is talking about. Cook, Michelle Stem and Amy F. Woolf (April 10, 2002). Zombie apocalypse According to Nostradamus, a scientist from Russia will create a biological weapon that create a virus that will turn people into zombies. The samples of Marburg taken from Ustinov's organs were more powerful than the original strain. "Dead through spite, he will cause the others to shine." and the kicker is it will eventually leave us extinct. [29] On 11 April 1992, Yeltsin decreed "the termination of research on offensive biological weapons, the dismantlement of experimental technological lines for the production of biological agents and the closure of biological weapons testing facilities",[23][30] and in September 1992 Yeltsin agreed in a Joint Statement on Biological Weapons with the United States and the United Kingdom that the two Western nations would "have a blanket invitation to visit facilities of concern in Russia under ground rules that guarantee unprecedented access, including access to the entire facility, the ability to take samples, the right to interview the workers and scientists, and the right to record the visits on video and audio tape. We know pathogens dont respect borders, so helping to put out public health fires before they become too big is an advantage to all of us, she said. 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. Russia has claimed without any evidence that biological weapons are being developed in laboratories in Ukraine with support from the United States. 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. 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. German intelligence independently identified the secret BW programme allegedly managed by Zlatogorov and Maslakovets. 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,. 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 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. Unsecured bioweapons in a war zone are a bad idea, Carlson told his millions of viewers this week. Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya held up images of pregnant women injured by Russian shelling of a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine. Russian authorities said that no biological material was present in the lab at the time of the explosion. 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.. Here's what he said: "Few young people: halfdead to give a start. ? 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. The threat reduction assisted post-Soviet states in containing and destroying the pathogens in Soviet labs. [8] Due to these reservations, it was in practice a "no-first-use" agreement only.[9]. In. 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.. 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. Imagine you come to a certain office and see an inscription on one of the rooms:Instruction for the cleaner. However, the largest epidemic of anthrax in Russia took place in Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinburg) in April 1979. 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. His American counterpart, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, warned that Russias claim could be a pretext for launching its own biological weapons attack on Ukraine. For starters, a Russian scientist will successfully develop a biological weapon in 2021, and create a virus that morphs humankind into zombies. [35], In the 2000s, the academician, "A.S.", proposed a new biological warfare program, called the "Biological Shield of Russia" to president Vladimir Putin. 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. [12], A production line to manufacture smallpox on an industrial scale was launched in the Vector Institute in 1990. 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. Journal articles by scientists suggest that in 1999 the experiments were still being continued. She also pointed out that she receives no U.S. funding for her research on genomic sequencing. These are the first 100 units of a gene in an influenza virus. 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. 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. Moscow went on to claim that it had found documents related to the secret US operation in laboratories in Kharkiv and Poltava. Ivanovskii Institute of Virology. The first group to arrive from Kirov included the new director of the Institute of Hygiene, Major General Nikolai Fillipovich Kopylov. Now hes talking about new false flags hes setting up, including hes asserting that, we, in America, have biological as well as chemical weapons in Europe. In 1926, at a small laboratory controlled by VOKhIMU, Fishman initiated research on Bacillus anthracis (the causative agent of anthrax). [18] In his uncorroborated account, Alibek claims that capacity for the production of smallpox virus was established in Zagorsk. [12] Another, possibly more reliable source, regarding the Soviet BW programme in Leningrad are a series of secret reports generated by the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) - commonly known as MI6. Congress. 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. [25] This triggered George H. W. Bush and Margaret Thatcher to pressure Gorbachev into opening for inspection several of his facilities. Conclusion. 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. 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. In the summer of 2016, the Russian army participated in the fight against the epidemic of anthrax in Yamal. A total of fourteen highly detailed reports on the Soviet BW programme were issued in the period 1924-1927.