Kremlin has accused the Americans of carrying out a host of biological weapons development programmes in Ukraine, posing an existential threat to Moscow
The genesis of the Russia-Ukraine crisis is the biological weapons programmes being run by the US agencies in Kyiv is not only posing an existential threat to Moscow but is also a cause of concern for the entire region. The Russian advances in Ukraine were slow as a result of the existence of bioweapons laboratories as also as also nuclear plants. The development of tactical bioweapons in Ukraine at the behest of the US led to the precipitation of the crisis between the Kremlin and Kyiv.
In the evolving fast charging geopolitical game post Russia-Ukraine crisis, the Kremlin has accused the Americans of carrying out a host of biological weapons development programmes in Ukraine posing existential threat to Moscow.
The Chief of the Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation has carried out a detailed analysis of the military-biological activities of the Pentagon in Ukraine.
The Russian embassy in New Delhi has been on record saying the Russian Ministry of Defence continues to analyze documents revealing the military-biological activities of the Pentagon in Ukraine.
“The involvement of entities close to the current US leadership, notably the Rosemont Seneca Investment Fund run by Hunter Biden, is noticeable in the funding of these activities. The Fund has significant financial resources of at least $2.4 billion,” the Russian embassy said, adding The Seneca Foundation is closely linked to key contractors of the US military department, including Metabiota, which, along with Black and Veach, is a major supplier of equipment to the Pentagon’s bio-labs around the world.
Incidentally, the Americans have already acknowledged finding the Wuhan Labs in China which is suspected to be behind the leak of the deadly novel coronavirus. According to the Russian assessment, the scale of the biological weapons programme of the US is “impressive.”
The US Agency for International Development, the George Soros Foundation and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention are directly involved, in addition to the military department. Scientific supervision is provided by leading research organisations, including the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which is developing nuclear weapons as part of the Manhattan Project, the Russian military’s analysis has exposed. All these activities, according to the Russian expose, are carried out under the full control of the Pentagon.
The registration card of the US-enlisted biological firms has confirmed that as many as 30 Ukrainian laboratories, located in 14 settlements were involved in full-scale military-biological activities in Ukraine.
Russia has attributed the assessment related to the US-backed weapons programme in Ukraine to a document signed by Viktor Polishchuk, Deputy State Secretary of the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers. The legal basis for its signing the document was the Agreement on Cooperation to Prevent the Spread of Technologies, Pathogens and Information that could be used for the development of biological weapons.
The registration card of the firms identifies the customer of the work, the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency, as well as a list of bio-objects.
As previously reported by the Kremlin, the funding for 2018-2020 alone was around $32 million. The text of the document states that the United States, its personnel and contractors are exempt from the obligation to pay taxes or other similar fees that are levied in Ukraine, elaborates the assessment by the Kremlin.
The Russian Ministry of Defence has disclosed and summarised the flow of biomaterials. Funding for military-biological activities in Kyiv has enabled the US and its allies to export at least 16,000 bioassays outside Ukraine.
Under the UP-8 Project funded by the Pentagon in Lvov, Kharkov, Odessa and Kiev, blood samples were taken from 4,000 servicemen for antibodies to Hantaviruses and from another 400 military personnel for antibodies to the Congo-Crimean fever virus, reveals the Russian analysis.
This large-scale screening of the natural immunity of the population was probably carried out in order to select the biological agents most dangerous to the population of a particular region.
A document review by the Russian agency revealed that not only human tissue and serum samples, but also dangerous pathogens and their transporters were exported. Thus, more than 10,000 samples were sent to Lugar Centre in Georgia. Other recipients include reference laboratories in the UK and the Loeffler Institute in Germany.
“All this creates risks for the transfer abroad of sensitive genetic information, as well as threats to biological security,” underscores the Russian assessment. One of the US customers’ priorities is the anthrax pathogen, which is highly susceptible and persistent in the environment.
The slide shows’ documents from the UP-2 Project, one of the tasks of which was to identify dead animal burial sites and taking soil samples from anthrax animal burial sites. The interest of US military biologists in studying insect vectors in animal burial sites is also not accidental. Apparently, they analysed the results of an outbreak of anthrax disease in Yamal in 2016, during which cases of vector-borne transmission through flies and gadflies were recorded.
Given that the situation with anthrax in Ukraine remains positive, it raises the question of the need for the Pentagon’s research and its true purpose. There are examples where the US military departments’ work with anthrax has ended in biosecurity emergencies.
The biological researches like the one involving Ukrainian military personnel are prohibited within the US and such studies are carried out by the American military department outside the US.
Earlier, under another project styled as UP-8 research involved more than 4,000 people for experiments. Attributing figures published in the Bulgarian media, the Russian assessment has pointed out that some 20 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in experiments in the Kharkov laboratory alone and another 200 were hospitalised.
The documents analysed by Russian agency have confirmed the American attempt to test previously untested medicines on them. This is the Deep Drug screening system for unlicensed pharmaceuticals in the United States and Canada.
What makes the US sponsors particularly cynical is that the developer, Scymount, offered to purchase the system in question on a commercial basis, despite the fact that Ukrainian Ministry of Defence officials were engaged as volunteers.
Such unacceptable approaches, with the tacit approval of the US administration, are the norm for big pharma companies. For example, the US Naval Medical Centre in Jakarta was shut down by Indonesian authorities in 2010 because of numerous irregularities, says Moscow.
The number of biological laboratories in the USA is not comparable with other countries. According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, they control 336 laboratories in 30 states outside national jurisdiction, according to Moscow’s assessment.
Russia has also demanded that clarification should be sought from Washington regarding the true objectives of the US biolaboratories as part of the international investigation, especially in the context of the incoming information relating to biological researches backed by Washington.
The US has not responded so far to the Russian allegations, giving credence to the Russian analysis that biological programmes are patronized by Washington.
(The writer is Special Correspondent, The Pioneer. The views expressed are personal.)