Briefing by Chief of NBC Protection Troops
Materials of the briefing by Chief of NBC Protection Troops
The Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation has repeatedly noted the signs of the implementation of ‘dual-purpose programmes’ by the USA and its allies outside their national territories, including within the operation of the biolaboratories funded by the Pentagon or its contractors.
The fact that the United States blocked the initiative to establish a monitoring mechanism of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) at the Ninth Review Conference once again confirms that Washington has something to hide, while the transparency of the biological research contradicts the interests of the USA.
We have previously informed about the works on enhancing the pathogenic characteristics of COVID-19 causative agent, carried out at Boston University with funds of the U.S. state budget, as well as the possible involvement of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in the emergence of the new coronavirus.
The key role in the implementation of the abovementioned projects belongs to EcoHealth Alliance intermediary organisation. The available documents of the U.S. Defence Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) confirm that since 2015, professionals of the abovementioned company have been studying the diversity in the population of bats, searching for new coronavirus strains, and mechanisms of its transmission from animals to humans. Over 2.5 thousand specimen have been researched.
The project on zoonotic virus research in South-East Asia contain the following recommendations for the employees of EcoHealth Alliance: ‘… If any of the experiments proposed for Aim 1 result in a virus with a phenotype of enhanced pathogenicity and/or transmissibility, enhanced growth by more than 10 fold when compared to wild type strains …, the recipient must immediately stop the work and notify the NIAID Program Officer, Grants Management Specialist, and appropriate institutional biosafety committee …’
The high degree of readiness of the U.S. mRNA vaccine manufacturers for a pandemic of the new coronavirus infection raises questions. One gets the impression that pharmaceutical companies had produced the vaccine preparations in advance, being unable to rapidly introduce them into the market due to specific characteristics of the virus that embodied in low efficiency of vaccination and numerous side effects.
It is to be reminded that on 18 October 2019, two months before the first official reports about the emergence of the new coronavirus infection in China, the John Hopkins University, supported by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, conducted Event 201 exercise in New York.
This exercise simulated the epidemic of a previously unknown coronavirus that, according to the scenario, was transmitted from bats to humans via pigs, the intermediate host.
Outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic precisely according to this scenario raises questions about its premeditated nature, involvement of the USA in this incident, as well as real objectives of the U.S. biological programmes aimed at enhancing the characteristics of dangerous pathogens.
We have repeatedly noted that the United States conduct the studies that are most controversial in terms of the international law outside the national territory.
The examples are the experiments related to HIV infection that have been carried out by U.S. specialists in Ukraine since 2019. It should be emphasized that the target groups include not only ‘high-risk infection patients’ (convicted or drug addicts), but also representatives of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
The premises of Pharmbiotest Medical Centre in Rubezhnoye were explored during the special military operation in the liberated territory of the Lugansk People’s Republic. It was a venue for clinical trials to test the medicinal products that caused serious side effects: they include medications for treating leukaemia, mental disorders, neurological diseases, epilepsy, and other dangerous illnesses.
In early 2023, residents of Lisichansk found a large landfill of biomaterial residues that belong to Pharmbiotest. The clinical samples and patients’ clinical records with their personal data were buried instead of being cremated or eliminated in appropriate manner, prescribed by the rules. This means that the evidence were being eliminated in extreme hurry.
The Russian Defence Ministry has received data on numerous facts of Ukrainian military personnel taking psychostimulants and narcotics (tramadol, methadone, amphetamines). The facts about smuggling morphine into war zones have been revealed. It is to be reminded that in accordance with Ukrainian laws, illegal circulation and transportation of the abovementioned products is to be punished by deprivation of liberty ranging from eight to 12 years.
Russia considers the actions committed by the officials who carried out the research on Ukrainian personnel, whose blood contained high concentrations of antibiotics, narcotics, antibodies to the causative agents of infectious diseases, require appropriate legal assessment.
During the special military operation, Russian personnel acquired over 20,000 documents, reference and analytical materials, as well as surveyed witnesses and participants of the U.S. biological programmes. The abovementioned materials confirm that the Pentagon aimed at creating elements of a biological weapon, and testing it on the population of Ukraine and other countries along the perimeter of the Russian borders.
The Russian Defence Ministry has already mentioned the names of the participants of the military and biological programmes, including those of the U.S. Democratic Party representatives, employees of the U.S. military department, and the Pentagon’s contracting organisations.
The DTRA reports have led us to the new information about key persons involved in the so-called Ukrainian projects who have been staying in the shadow until now.
Among of them are:
Karen Saylors, CEO at Labyrinth Global Health and ex-director of Metabiota’s programmes in Central Africa. Since 2016, Saylors has worked in Ukraine as leading advisor at the UP-10 project, dedicated to studying ways of spreading of African swine fever.
Colleen B. Jonsson, an employee of the University of Tennessee, Director of the Institute for the Study of Host-Pathogen Systems. She observed the UP-8 project, dedicated to studying the capabilities of the Crimean-Congo fever’s causative agent in Ukraine. Jonsson managed the selection of biological samples from Ukrainian personnel, provided the cooperation between the contract specifiers in the USA and the Center for Public Health of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine.
Lewis Von Thaer, President and CEO of Battelle company, a major contractor of the Pentagon and U.S. Department of Energy. Since 2003, the company has been responsible for organising research projects in Ukraine related to zoonotic infections.
Other persons involved in the Ukrainian projects are presented on the slide. The acquired materials will be submitted to the Investigative Committee for measures to bring those guilty to justice.
The active action of the Russian Defence Ministry has resulted in halting the military biological programmes in Ukraine. In this regard, the Pentagon is actively relocating the studies, that have not been completed within the Ukrainian projects, to Central Asia and Eastern Europe countries. At the same time, the cooperation with African and Asia-Pacific countries – Kenya, Singapore, and Thailand – is being actively enhanced.
Under the pressure from the international community, Washington changes its approaches to organising its military biological activity, transferring the functions of the customer to purely civilian departments: the Department of Health, Department of Energy, and the Agency for International Development. This will allow the U.S. authorities to avoid criticism at international venues, and deflect a blow from the Department of Defense and DTRA.
Within curtailing the military biological activities in Ukraine, the United States actively use the material base of chemical and pharmacological enterprises of Poland and Baltic countries, where the equipment from the Ukrainian territory was sent to.
The funding, imposed by the collective West, makes the post-Soviet countries conceal the true nature of these works. The European Union is actively promoting the initiative to deploy a network of centres of ‘excellence’ in the field of nuclear, biological and chemical protection, that provides for placing EU-funded biolaboratories in the territories of the former Soviet Union. The prospective partners are highly recommended ‘… not to advertise this initiative due to its extreme sensitivity for the Russian Federation …’
At the same time, it is stressed that the Central Asian countries ‘… are already taking benefit from technical cooperation with the European Union …’
In 2022, the USA, Canada, and EU countries initiated programmes to employ and relocate the Ukrainian professionals, who had been involved in military biological works before, to Western countries. It is primarily due to the concerns that the Russian law enforcement can receive additional testimonies to the illegal activities carried out in violation of international obligations.
It is to be emphasised that the strategy of ‘military and biological expansion’ is not fundamentally new, and it was founded by the United States back in the period of the Korean conflict.
Since the 1950s, biological laboratories were established in Africa, Central and South America, as well as South-East Asia, with the priority role of the U.S. Navy. Their main objective was to sample causative agents of highly dangerous infections, and determine the level of morbidity among local population.
The areas, where these laboratories located, witnessed a deterioration in the epidemic situation regarding highly dangerous infections, as well as now. New diseases, uncharacteristic for these regions, emerged. One of the examples is the outbreak of Rift Valley Fever in 1977 in Cairo, where the U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit Three was located.
This disease had previously been recorded only south of the Sahara, but then it suddenly emerged in Egypt, simultaneously infecting 18,000 people. Further analysis of the samples taken from the population showed that the total number of infected people was around 2,000,000.
A whole array of proofs reveal the artificial nature of this outbreak and the involvement of the U.S. laboratory.
First, several months before the epidemic started, its staff had been vaccinated against Rift Valley Fever, although there had been no records of an outbreak of this infection in that region, whilst in the endemic regions of Africa, it proceeded as a light influenza-like illness that caused no human deaths.
Second, the causative agent suddenly acquired high pathogenicity for humans during the epidemic in Egypt. The disease caused haemorrhage, severe eye and nervous system lesion. The virus became highly pathogenic and almost could be compared with smallpox, Marburg and Lassa fevers in this regard. It is extremely difficult to define the sudden change in pathogenicity of the virus by its natural evolution.
The analysis of initial focus shape is of particular interest. The form of this epidemiological focus reminds an aerosol cloud trace that can emerge in case of intentional dispersion of a biomaterial or its accidental release into the environment.
Despite the available evidential base about the artificial nature of the outbreak, the U.S. leadership has done everything to conceal the involvement of the laboratory in this incident. Only in 2019, it was decided to relocate it to the U.S. Naval Air Station Sigonella, Italy, to continue the research on highly dangerous pathogens, including coronaviruses.
In conclusion, I would like to note that the disclosure of the content of the Pentagon’s military biological programmes in Ukraine by the Russian Federation has gained a wide public response. Mass demonstrations against the activities of the U.S.-funded laboratories were held in the countries of the former Soviet Union. Non-governmental organisations of the Eurasian Economic Union adopted a resolution against the Pentagon-funded biolaboratories.
Various investigations were initiated in the United States itself. The U.S. law enforcement has paid attention to the topics related to bribing employees of social networks and mass media while broadcasting the cause of the new coronavirus infection, as well as manipulating the public opinion about the U.S. vaccines against COVID-19 commissioned by biotechnological and pharmaceutical corporations.
It is to be reminded that lobbying the interests of large pharmaceutical companies by the U.S. government is a common practice. Back in 2010, the operation of a U.S. Navy Medical Biological Centre in Jakarta was ceased due to a ‘conflict of interests’ and various violations.
The Americans performed their works outside the agreed research programme, carried out unauthorised sampling, and refused to inform the Indonesian government on the purposes of their works and the results achieved. These biomaterials turned out to be used to the benefit of the Gilead company, affiliated with the Pentagon, that tested their preparations in Ukraine and Georgia (including, but not limited to).
The Indonesian example was followed by Malaysia: the government of that country decided to establish special control over the activities of the U.S.-funded biolaboratory.
Therefore, the concerns of the international community, related to the activities of the Pentagon-funded biolaboratories, is gradually increasing. The issues, raised by the Russian Federation at the international venues – the Nineth Review Conference of BTWC Member States, and the UN Security Council – have revealed the reluctance of the USA to conduct a substantive dialogue. Russia considers it extremely important that the disclosure of the facts that reveal the illegal military and biological activities have caused various countries to consider possible consequences of their biosafety cooperation with the USA, and take a fresh look at the necessity and rationale of this kind of cooperation.
The Russian Defence Ministry will continue its work in this direction and report on it.
NBC Protection Troops Briefing (PPT)_1
WtR