MOSCOW, February 6. /TASS/. On February 6, 2023, the parliamentary commission of Russia’s Federal Assembly, created to investigate the circumstances related to the creation of biological laboratories by US specialists on the territory of Ukraine will meet in session.
Basic information
According to information at Russia’s disposal the United States has deployed a network of biological laboratories in a number of states neighboring Russia, where under the auspices of the US Department of Defense, research involving dangerous viruses and other pathogens is underway. The US argues that the laboratories act in the interests of the security of the United States and its allies, and rejects the suspicion that biological weapons are being created there.
Defense Threat Reduction Agency
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) has been operating within the US Department of Defense system since 1998. This organization is responsible for countering threats posed by weapons of mass destruction (WMD, nuclear, chemical and biological weapons); develops measures and means of protecting the armed forces and population of the United States and its allies in the event of the use of WMD.
The Pentagon has launched the Biological Threat Reduction Program and the Cooperative Biological Engagement Program. Agreements were concluded with the governments of a number of countries on joint counteraction to the threat of especially dangerous infections (including outbreaks of diseases caused intentionally or accidentally). According to the US Embassy in Ukraine, the coordination of biological laboratories is carried out partially through the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine (STCU, headquartered in Kiev). The Center was established in 1993 on the initiative of the United States, Canada and Sweden with the aim to provide support to scientists and specialists who had been involved in the development of Soviet weapons of mass destruction and missile technologies. The current STCU member countries are Azerbaijan, Canada, Georgia, Moldova, Sweden, Ukraine, the US, Uzbekistan and the European Union).
Russia's concerns
Gennady Onishchenko (the head of the consumer rights watchdog from 2004-2013) was the first to throw the spotlight on the possible threat from US co-sponsored biolaboratories. In 2011-2013 he repeatedly argued that African swine fever (since 2007 its foci have been registered on the territories of 24 constituent entities of Russia and more than 440,000 pigs had to be slaughtered and disposed of), could be brought to Russia from Georgia. Onishchenko described that as an "artificially-created situation" and "economic sabotage" and mentioned the Georgian-US Richard M. Lugar Center for Public Health, located in a Tbilisi suburb, as a possible source of the virus.
On December 31, 2015, Russian President Vladimir Putin approved the National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation by his decree, which mentioned the expansion of the network of US military biological laboratories on the territory of states neighboring Russia.
On October 4, 2018, Major-General Igor Kirillov, the chief of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Force, said that the United States had launched an extensive military biological program on the territories of countries adjacent to Russia. Kirillov said the purpose of the laboratories was "to collect data on infectious diseases and the export of national collections of strains of pathogenic microorganisms, resistant to vaccines and resistant antibiotics." He described the laboratories on the territories adjacent to Russia and China as "a constant source of biological threats to our states."
On January 15, 2019, the Secretary of Russia’s Security Council Nikolay Patrushev said in an interview with the government-published Rossiyskaya Gazeta that there were about 200 US "biological military laboratories" around the world, and "their activities have little to do with peaceful science." The Chinese authorities share Russia’s official stance. On April 29, 2020, China’s Foreign Ministry pointed to the risks posed by the US biological laboratories on the territory of the former Soviet Union.
Facilities in Georgia and Armenia
The US-funded Richard M. Lugar Center for Public Health has been operating in the village of Alekseyevka near Tbilisi International Airport in Georgia since 2011. Georgia’s former minister of state security, Igor Giorgadze, told a press conference in Moscow, on September 11, 2018, that he had documentary evidence confirming that the center was staging dangerous experiments, and called on the US authorities to investigate its activities. Giorgadze pointed out that US military and private contractors might perform secret human experiments there. Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon told TASS on September 15, 2018 that the US was not developing biological weapons at the Lugar center. According to the Russian Foreign Ministry’s commentary dated May 26, 2020, Russia had sent a request to Georgia to allow Russian specialists to visit the center "on mutually beneficial terms." There have been no reports such a visit has taken place.
In September 2018, Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in an interview with the Russian daily Kommersant that following his instructions Russian specialists were admitted to US laboratories on Armenian territory. According to Pashinyan, the Russian specialists had found "nothing terrible" at the laboratories.
US biolaboratories in Ukraine
On August 29, 2005, the Ukrainian Health Ministry and the US Department of Defense signed an agreement in the field of biological threat reduction. The document provided for creating a network of laboratories in Ukraine specializing in the identification of infectious disease agents. In August 2017, the CyberBerkut group of hacktivists made public its findings testifying to the fact that since 2009 a total of 15 biological laboratories affiliated with the Health Ministry had been created in the country. In 2020, the U.S. embassy in Kiev said that "in Ukraine, the U.S. Department of Defense’s Biological Threat Reduction Program works with the Ukrainian government to consolidate and secure pathogens and toxins of security concern in Ukrainian government facilities, while allowing for peaceful research and vaccine development."
Data obtained during special military operation in Ukraine
On March 6, 2022, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said that during the special military operation in Ukraine, the Russian army uncovered evidence of a US-funded military biological program. He stressed that the documents obtained confirmed that biological weapons components were being developed at Ukrainian biolaboratories near Russian territory.
The chief of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Force, Igor Kirillov, presented a report saying that a network of more than 30 biological laboratories - research and sanitary-epidemiological ones - had been created on the territory of Ukraine. As follows from the report, the DTRA was their customer. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, their work was proceeding in three main areas: biological situation monitoring, selection and transfer of strains and biomaterials, including those obtained from military personnel, as well as research into potential bioweapon agents specific to the region. The authors of the Russian Defense Ministry’s report said that under the pretext of testing means of the treatment and prevention of the coronavirus infection, the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center had taken out of Ukraine several thousand samples of the serum of patients, "primarily belonging to the Slavic ethnic group."
Kirillov said that on February 24, the day when Russia’s special military operation began, all laboratories received orders from Ukraine’s Health Ministry to completely destroy any bioagents in stock. As the Russian Ministry said, the activities of biological laboratories had already resulted in the uncontrollable growth of especially dangerous infections, including rubella, diphtheria, tuberculosis, and measles. According to the Russian Defense Ministry’s data, the United States had allocated about $200 million to finance the program.
On March 10, Konashenkov said that at the biological laboratories, created and financed in Ukraine, "experiments with bat coronavirus samples were carried out."
Kirillov later said that funds belonging to George Soros and Hunter Biden (son of US President Joe Biden) had been used to finance the activities of 30 Ukrainian laboratories in 14 communities. These laboratories, according to Kirillov, had been sending collected strains of infectious agents to the United States and that the movement of pathogens was not controlled within the framework of the WHO, the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons (BTWC) or other international institutions.
On November 24, the head of the Research Center for Chemical and Biological Threats under the Russian Defense Ministry, Dmitry Poklonsky, said that the documents obtained during the special military operation testified to the accumulation of "pathogenic materials in unreasonable quantities" by US laboratories in Ukraine, which may indicate preparations for the use of bioweapons.
On December 24, 2022, the Russian Defense Ministry held a news briefing on the sidelines of the 9th Review Conference of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) in Geneva, where it presented evidence of Ukraine's research into biological weapons components with the US’ support.
Reaction by Ukraine and US
On March 7, 2022, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry stated that the country was not engaged in the development of biological weapons. US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, speaking on March 9 at a hearing of the Foreign Relations Committee of the US Senate, admitted that "Ukraine has biological research facilities, which, in fact, we are now quite concerned Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to gain control of."
On March 10, 2022, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, speaking at a briefing, dismissed everything that was being said about the development of biological weapons in laboratories in Ukraine as "classic Russian propaganda."
On June 9, 2022, the Pentagon said that over the past 20 years, the US authorities had supported 46 different civilian laboratories, healthcare facilities and diagnostic centers in Ukraine and that all interaction was carried out for peaceful purposes. According to the US military, there are no programs in Ukraine for creating nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.
On January 31, 2023, John Kirby, the strategic communications coordinator at the White House National Security Council, said at a regular media briefing that the United States considered Russia’s statements about US biological laboratories in Ukraine unfounded.
Russian parliamentary probe
Since March 2022, a Russian parliamentary investigation into the biological laboratories in Ukraine has been underway. The panel of inquiry consists of 14 lower house members and 14 upper house members. State Duma Deputy Speaker Irina Yarovaya and Federation Council Deputy Speaker Konstantin Kosachev are its co-chairs. The commission is to produce a factsheet to be submitted to Russia’s president and government and to international organizations no later than March 2023.