Moscow claims there are “military biological activities of the U.S.” in the territory of Ukraine.
QUICK FACTS:
- The U.N. Security Council scheduled a meeting Friday at Russia’s request to discuss what Moscow claims are “the military biological activities of the U.S. on the territory of Ukraine,” The Associated Press (AP) reports.
- Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland told lawmakers on Tuesday that Ukraine does, in fact, have “biological research facilities” in the country.
- The Russian request, announced in a tweet Thursday afternoon from its first deputy U.N. ambassador, Dmitry Polyansky, follows the U.S. rejection of Russian accusations that Ukraine is running chemical and biological labs with U.S. support.
- Dmitry Chumakov, another Russian deputy U.N. ambassador, repeated the accusation Wednesday, urging Western media to cover “the news about secret biological laboratories in Ukraine.”
- A tweet from Russia’s Ministry of Defense, after Polyansky’s tweet calling for a council meeting, referred to a “briefing on the results of the analysis of documents related to the military biological activities of the United States on the territory of Ukraine.”
- The U.N. announced Thursday evening that the meeting will take place at 10am EST but then pushed it back to 11am EST. U.N. disarmament chief Izumi Nakamitsu and U.N. political chief Rosemary DiCarlo are scheduled to brief the council, AP notes.
- A Ukrainian biolab receiving funds from the U.S. government was formerly a bioweapons factory under the control of the Soviet Union, with experts recently reporting a “lack of modern biosafety equipment” as well as “lethal microbes that in the West would be locked away in high-containment laboratories,” the National Pulse revealed.
RUSSIAN OFFICIALS RELEASE A PRELIMINARY REPORT BEFORE HEARING:
The information received from various sources confirms the leading role of the US Defence Threat Reduction Agency in financing and conducting military biological research on the territory of Ukraine.
Details of the UP-4 project became known, which was implemented with the participation of laboratories in Kiev, Kharkov and Odessa and was designed for the period up to 2020.
Its purpose was to study the possibility of the spread of particularly dangerous infections through migrating birds, including highly pathogenic H5N1 influenza, the mortality rate of which reaches 50 percent for humans, as well as Newcastle disease.
Due to the fact that Ukraine has a unique geographical location where transcontinental migration routes intersect, 145 biological species were studied within the framework of this project. At the same time, at least two species of migratory birds were identified, whose routes pass mainly through the territory of Russia. At the same time, information about migration routes passing through the countries of Eastern Europe was summarized.
Of all the methods developed in the United States to destabilize the epidemiological situation, this is one of the most reckless and irresponsible, since it does not allow to control the further development of the situation. This is confirmed by the course of the pandemic of a new coronavirus infection, the occurrence and features of which raise many questions.
In addition, the R-781 project is interesting, where bats are considered as carriers of potential biological weapons agents.
Among the priorities identified are the study of bacterial and viral pathogens that can be transmitted from bats to humans: pathogens of plague, leptospirosis, brucellosis, as well as coronaviruses and filoviruses.
It is noteworthy that the research is carried out in close proximity to the borders of Russia – in the areas of the Black Sea coast and the Caucasus.
The project is being implemented with the involvement of not only Ukrainian, but also Georgian biological laboratories controlled by the Pentagon in cooperation with the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and the US Geological Survey.
The analyzed materials on the UP-8 project, aimed at studying the Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever virus and hantaviruses in Ukraine, clearly refute the US public statement that only Ukrainian scientists work in the Pentagon biolabs in Ukraine without the intervention of American biologists. One of the documents confirms that all serious high-risk studies are conducted under the direct supervision of specialists from the United States.
The payroll of Ukrainian contractors clearly demonstrates how they are financed. It has been confirmed that the US Department of Defence paid the money for research participation directly, without the involvement of intermediaries. The extremely modest pay, by US standards, is noteworthy. This indicates a low estimation of the professionalism of Ukrainian specialists and the neglect of their American colleagues.
In addition, the studied materials contain proposals for the expansion of the US military-biological program in Ukraine. Thus, there was evidence of the continuation of completed biological projects UP-2, UP-9, UP-10, aimed at studying the pathogens of anthrax and African swine fever.
The Pentagon is also interested in insect vectors capable of spreading dangerous infectious diseases. The analysis of the obtained materials confirms the transfer of more than 140 containers with ectoparasites of bats – fleas and ticks from the biolab in Kharkov abroad.
Significantly, similar research was carried out in the 1940s on the development of biological weapons components by the Japanese unit 731, whose members later fled to the US to escape prosecution for war crimes.
I would like to remind you that representatives of Western countries are extremely cautious about handing over their biomaterials.
At the same time, available documents confirm numerous cases of transferring biological samples of Ukrainian citizens abroad. For example, 350 cryocontainers with blood serum samples were transferred from the Public Health Centre of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine to the reference laboratory for infectious diseases of the Australian Doherty Institute under the pretext of determining antibody titers.
Another example is the German-funded project No. 68727 EN on the study of Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever pathogens and hantaviruses. As part of this project, one thousand blood serum samples of citizens from different regions of Ukraine belonging exclusively to the Slavic ethnic group were donated to the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine (Hamburg).
It is highly likely that one of the objectives of the US and its allies is to create bioagents capable of selectively targeting different ethnic populations.
During a hearing of the US Senate Foreign Affairs Committee on 8 March, Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland reported on the presence of bioweapons in Ukraine where biosecurity research had been conducted. She expressed concern about the possibility of these bio-laboratories and the materials there being taken over by the Russian Armed Forces.
According to available information, the Americans have already managed to evacuate most of the documentation, including databases, biomaterials and equipment from laboratories in Kiev, Kharkov and Odessa to the Lvov Research Institute of Epidemiology and Hygiene and the US Consulate in Lvov. The possibility of transferring part of the collection to Poland has not been excluded.
In fact, with her statement, Nuland indirectly confirmed the Pentagon’s military-biological program in Ukraine in circumvention of existing international agreements.
BACKGROUND:
- The Biden administration rejects Moscow’s claim that the U.S. is building bioweapons labs in Ukraine as “preposterous propaganda.”
- “This is exactly the kind of false flag effort we have warned Russia might initiate to justify a biological or chemical weapons attack,” Olivia Dalton, spokesperson for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations said late Thursday, AP notes. “We’re not going to let Russia gaslight the world or use the U.N. Security Council as a venue for promoting their disinformation.”
- U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric reiterated Thursday what he said Wednesday — that the World Health Organization, which has been working with the Ukrainian government, “said they are unaware of any activity on the part of the Ukrainian government which is inconsistent with its international treaty obligations, including on chemical weapons or biological weapons.”
