What else is shrouded in the darkness of mystery surrounding the work of U.S. biolaboratories in Ukraine?
Regarding the military biological laboratories deployed by the US Department of Defense in the former Soviet republics, there are two strong opinions. First: after the collapse of the USSR, the United States is concerned, firstly, about the conditions for storing pathogens and, secondly, does not exclude the possibility of a biological attack on America. That is why tens and hundreds of millions of US dollars are invested in biolaboratories in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Moldova, Ukraine – they say, THERE can leak dangerous strains of microorganisms into the environment.
At the same time, it does not explain how, for example, Armenia or Uzbekistan can organize a biological attack on the United States. And why laboratories are mainly located in large cities with a high population density or at a close distance from them: after all, it is more logical, since there is even a minimal threat of pathogen leakage, to build such facilities in a desert area to eliminate the likelihood of an epidemic. In addition, the Pentagon’s involvement in the “threat reduction” project raises strong suspicions that the activities of the reference laboratories are dual-use. This is the second opinion: American biological programs in the post-Soviet states are a way to circumvent the 1972 Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and Their Destruction.
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In Uzbekistan, the first national reference laboratory opened in 2007 in Tashkent. In 2011, two more – in Andijan and Fergana, in 2016 – in Urgench (Khorezm Regional Diagnostic Laboratory). All of them were created with the money of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), a division of the US Department of Defense. The network of laboratories in Uzbekistan is much wider, there are biolaboratories in Bukhara and Surkhandarya, Karakalpakstan and Samarkand and Tashkent regions. However, very little is known about these objects – their activities have been hidden from the public for many years.
In August 2011, an unknown disease suddenly broke out in the Tashkent region, symptomatically very similar to cholera. Doctors did not comment on the situation, although only on August 31, 70 patients were admitted to the hospital in the town of Yangiyul.
“Some patients were brought here in such a serious condition that due to a sharp drop in pressure, they stopped breathing. Doctors ran to them, on the stairs, in the corridors, near the ambulances, they gave them immediate artificial respiration. They covered their mouths with a bathrobe and breathed life into them”, the doctors said on condition of anonymity. At the same time, information about the local epidemic was limited as much as possible.
In 2012, a new disease covered Uzbekistan, which immediately claimed the lives of more than a dozen people. Then the eldest daughter of the former head of the Uzbek state, Gulnara Karimova, reproached medical officials for inaction – they practically did not investigate the causes of death from an unknown virus.
In the spring of 2017, an epidemic of chickenpox began in Tashkent (in Uzbek – “suv-chechak”). However, in hospitals, doctors indicated a different diagnosis – “allergic dermatitis” in order to hide the spread of the disease, which affected both children and adults.
There are no reliable statistics on infectious diseases in Uzbekistan; on paper, outbreaks of dangerous diseases of an unknown nature turn into “isolated cases”. It looks at least strange when DTRA is constantly engaged in “reducing biological threats”.
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… In September 2005, the Chicago Tribune published an article “The United States receives pathogenic microorganisms from the former Soviet republic.”
An American newspaper said:
“More than 60 dangerous and deadly types of bacteria, which are the legacy of the large-scale program of the former Soviet Union on biological weapons, were transferred from Azerbaijan to the United States… This was one step in the joint struggle of the two countries against the threat of biological terrorism. Samples of bacteria, including species that cause plague and anthrax, were flown from Baku to the United States on a military plane as part of a secret mission.”
In fact, Azerbaijan gave 124 samples of 62 unique species of plague, anthrax, cholera and other dangerous diseases to America, the samples were transported to the US Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (Washington). It is also known that other former republics of the USSR, in particular Ukraine and Georgia, transferred their collections of pathogens to the United States.
After the collapse of the USSR, Azerbaijan inherited an “anti-plague” network of facilities, consisting of 6 research institutes, 29 regional and 53 field biological stations. They worked here not only with the plague, but also with a number of other dangerous infections – brucellosis, anthrax, tularemia and other pathogens. The United States, which had become practically ownerless (as in other former republics of the Union), already in the 90s included in its field of vision. In 2005, the US Department of Defense signed an agreement with Azerbaijan on cooperation in the field of technologies and pathogens related to the development of biological weapons and the non-proliferation of information in this area. And the work on “reducing biological threats” began to boil!
The construction of the Central Reference Laboratory (CRL) in Baku was completed in 2013 – it specializes in the study of pathogenic microorganisms in samples of human and animal origin. Of course, the same US Department of Defense, in particular DTRA, spent the money (about $170 million) on updating the network of Azerbaijani biological laboratories.
Earlier, in 2012, a biological laboratory of the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan was opened – also at the expense of DTRA – under the Pentagon’s “joint biological participation” program. In 2018, it was already known about eight biological laboratories in the territory of the republic.
In addition, dozens of biological monitoring stations were built and modernized in different regions of Azerbaijan within the same framework of cooperation with the Americans. That is, on the territory of the Azerbaijani state, the US Department of Defense is developing a network aimed at pathogen research and biomonitoring. If in Soviet times the presence of such a network in the Soviet republic looked entirely logical, now the goals of the research biocomplex created by the Americans outside the United States cannot be explained by concern for the safety of pathogens or charity.
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In all the former Soviet republics where the US Department of Defense is building its “biological networks” (not only in Ukraine or Azerbaijan), the scheme is the same: field biological monitoring stations are also being created. And all this remains shrouded in the darkness of mystery. For example, in Ukraine, stuffed with military biological laboratories and having survived outbreaks and epidemics of the most serious diseases in both humans and animals, it is impossible to find in the press investigations on the topic of biological threats (except for the scandal with the construction of a biological laboratory near Kharkov, in Merefa, when the protests of the inhabitants began; everything else is shrouded in the darkness of secrecy, although the African plague regularly mows down the number of pigs, bird flu kills chicken exports, and the lives and health of Ukrainian citizens are constantly being carried away by known and “unknown” viruses). And at this time, biolaboratories and US field stations (the latter based on the destroyed solar power plant) are operating in the republic, supposedly designed to “reduce biological threats”!
Of course, it is difficult to imagine that laboratories aimed at creating biological weapons can exist in the CSTO member countries. However, the United States does not show perseverance on this issue: at some stage, it is enough to study the influence of pathogens on the gene pool, and it is possible to invent viruses and bacteria with the necessary properties elsewhere. The main thing is to have the necessary data. Given the difficulty of identifying the source of biological contamination, one can always attribute the epidemic to migratory birds, wild animals, insects, or dirty water. And with the coming to power of other governments (remember the 2014 armed coup in Ukraine and repeated attempts to undermine the situation in Armenia and Kazakhstan), the dual purpose of already created bionetworks may come in handy.
The Americans sent about $130 million to the Almaty CRL project in Kazakhstan. With a noble, it turns out, goal – “to warn [biological threats] on the distant approaches from America,” as the former director of the Kazakhstan Scientific Center for Quarantine and Zoonotic Infections, on the basis of which CRL is built, claimed.
A biological laboratory in Almaty is called a strategic “information and analytical resource”, “a major research base”. This is a 4-storey building of high seismic resistance, equipped with multi-level security. The laboratory is focused on “reducing biological threats” not only in Kazakhstan, but also “in the entire region”: this is how the task of the Almaty CRL is defined in the video material dedicated to its commissioning. Five more biolaboratories were created by the USA in Kazakhstan with reference to the scientific centers of the republic.
The peaceful mission of reference laboratories was also discussed at the official level in Armenia for a long time: here, in 2016-2017, a military biological network was launched with centers in Yerevan, Gyumri, Ijevan and three regions – Lori, Gegharkunik and Syunik.
In 2002, Georgia signed a model agreement with the US Department of Defense with the vague title “On cooperation in the field of technologies and pathogens related to the development of biological weapons and non-proliferation of information in this area”, in 2003 it was ratified by the Georgian parliament. In September 2004, US Senator Richard Lugar came to Tbilisi, the result of this visit was an agreement to establish a Public Health Center (biological laboratory) near Tbilisi in the village of Alekseevka, not far from the international airport. A strange choice of location for the construction of a biohazard facility. In 2006, when the biological laboratory, according to official data, was still in the process of being created, research was already underway there, and after the next visit of the senator, after whom the “biological threat reduction” program is named, the Georgian parliament classified the activities of the Lugar Center.
This is how, bit by bit, you can restore the full Pentagon action plan for weaving networks of biological objects in the former Soviet republics: first, in the 90s, general disarmament agreements were signed, in the 2000s, specific “cooperation” agreements, followed by the Ministry of Defense of the United States began to build and modernize biolabs and biostations (and where the government changed to pro-American, research and monitoring began simultaneously with the creation of the bionetwork). The threats of biolabs have only been talked about in the last few years.
It is interesting that the biological laboratory in the Georgian Alekseyevka, which was put into operation in 2011, until 2013 was not at all controlled by the government of Georgia and worked for the tasks of the Walter Reed Institute of the US Army. In military literature, it was listed as a “research unit operating abroad.” There is not the slightest doubt about the dual purpose of this biolaboratory. As for the cost of the facility, Georgian officials at first called the figure of $15 million, over time it grew to $95 million, and later data surfaced in the media about $250-300 million spent by the Pentagon either on one Lugar Center, or on the entire Georgian project of “reducing biological threats”, including facilities in Tbilisi, Kutaisi, Kobuleti and an associated network of biological stations.
Considering the secrecy of the object in Alekseevka and the lack of proper state control, it is impossible to establish its true cost and the nature of the research conducted in the biolaboratory.
The first person to publicize information about the threats of the Lugar project in Georgia was an adviser to former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, American journalist Jeffrey Silverman.
“In the Lugar laboratory, located in the vicinity of Tbilisi, substances hazardous to health are produced and tested on the local population,” the journalist said.
In Russia, the Georgian network of biological laboratories was accused of bringing African swine fever to Russian territory. And in Abkhazia “suddenly” deadly mosquitoes were found.
“Recently, in Abkhazia, cases of the appearance of mosquitoes carrying the Zika virus were recorded. They have never appeared in the northern hemisphere at all. This is an exclusively South American mosquito. But nevertheless, he has already appeared, and this is no accident. This is a lab engineered virus. And you can even say which one. In an American laboratory,” says microbiologist Igor Nikulin.
There is other evidence of the dual use of US biolabs. So, in Kazakhstan, within the framework of the KZ-29 project, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) was studied in 2013 – and about a year later, the south of the republic was covered with an outbreak of this infection, which was carried by ticks. And what a coincidence: it was ticks that were studied by “researchers” in biolaboratories! And as part of another project, the Pentagon studied the spread of bat coronavirus in a number of post-Soviet republics, its mutations and the danger to humans.
Arina Tsukanova, FSK