The Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation continues to analyse the military and biological activities of the U.S. and its allies in Ukraine and on the territory of other countries.
The second meeting of the working group on strengthening the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention was held in Geneva from 8 to 17 August 2023. The event was held to develop concrete and effective measures to strengthen the BTWC regime.
Despite the purely expert nature of the meeting, due to the position of the United States and Ukraine, the discussion of the agenda was highly politicised.
The Western group of countries promoted the idea of creating a voluntary financial fund on the platform of the Convention, under the control of a specially created committee with the possibility of allocating earmarked funds for projects favourable to them.
The Russian Federation was in favour of ensuring equitable access to technologies and scientific achievements in the biological sphere and called for unilateral restrictive measures against States Parties to the Convention to be avoided.
Russia was supported by a number of countries, the number of which began to increase amid the reaction of the world’s media to the publication of documents on the U.S. military-biological activities, even such as the American publication American Greitens, the British Bit Chute, the Italian La Presse, and the Greek Banking News.
The reports of non-governmental organisations as Interpol, the World Health Organisation, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the Committee on UN Security Council Resolution No. 1540, whose tasks are in no way related to the subject matter and objectives of the Convention, traced pro-Western ideas about the non-mandatory nature of the BTWC verification regime and the possibility of replacing it with non-core mechanisms.
In discussing the issue of national implementation of the BTWC, the Russian Federation once again raised the issue of violations of the Convention by the Kiev regime and its Western curators. It was noted that the USA and Ukraine position military-biological research as cooperation for peaceful purposes, ‘hiding behind’ Article 10 of the Convention.
It is noteworthy that during the work in Geneva of the expert group on strengthening the BTWC, the Pentagon published a policy document ‘Biosecurity Policy Review’, which defines the actions of the U.S. Department of Defence in this area for the period up to 2035.
The policy developed by the U.S. administration is based on the U.S. National Defence Strategy, the National Biosecurity Strategy, and the Biological Threats and Pandemic Preparedness Plan.
Although its stated purpose is to: ‘…deter the use of biological weapons and respond to natural outbreaks…’, the document creates a legal basis for further U.S. biological-military expansion and research outside of national territory.
In particular, the overseas network of United States-controlled biolaboratories will be expanded and the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which was previously imposed by the U.S. administration on post-Soviet countries, will be continued.
This is supposed to follow a well-established pattern of involving civilian ministries and intermediary organisations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in the implementation of Pentagon plans.
As Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense Programs Deborah Rosenblum stated, ‘…biosecurity is no longer the domain of specialised Army units alone…’.
The biological-military nature of the planned activity is also evident from the fact that it will be conducted by the Biodefence Council, chaired by U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defence William LaPlante.
In general, the number of administrative structures engaged in the implementation of bioprospecting in the USA has increased significantly.
We previously told you about the creation of the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness, which is headed by U.S. Air Force Major General Paul Friedrichs. It was noted that the work of the directorate would focus on pathogens that could trigger another global emergency.
As it turns out, this is not the only structure created by the U.S. administration in 2023 to organise dual-use research outside the national territory.
On 1 August, the State Department’s Bureau of Global Health and Diplomacy was formed.
Its official purpose is stated as ‘…international cooperation in the effective prevention, detection and control of infectious diseases, including HIV/AIDS…’. In practice, the office will be responsible for setting policy and coordinating Washington’s efforts to establish a global infectious disease monitoring system and achieve United States leadership in this area.
Ambassador-at-Large John Nkengasong, who previously served as director of the Africa Regional Office of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a structure involved in the implementation of U.S. military biological programmes, has been appointed to head the new structure.
I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the State Department regularly emphasises its non-involvement in biological activities on the grounds that it is not a core foreign policy issue.
We have in our possession documented evidence of the State Department’s involvement in the Biosecurity Engagement Programe since 2016. According to the funding plan, at least $40 million is envisaged for the involvement of various non-profit and non-governmental organisations alone.
The documents demonstrate the active participation of the U.S. State Department in bioprogrammes on the territory of foreign countries, as well as Washington’s desire to use third-party performers to conceal the customers and purposes of the research being conducted.
Special attention is given to countries in the Middle East (Iraq, Yemen, Jordan), South-East Asia (Indonesia, Philippines) and Africa (Kenya, Morocco, Uganda). Mention is made of President Obama’s role in promoting the State Department’s proposed biological programmes.
It should also be noted that Ukraine occupies a special place in the planning documents and is singled out as a separate region.
Thus, Washington is making administrative, financial, and diplomatic efforts to establish U.S. global biological control.
The scale of the biological-military activities and the extensive cooperation of the perpetrators are confirmed not only by the documents received, but also by the statements of political representatives in the United States itself.
I would like to highlight a few statements by Democratic presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, Jr. During an interview with the American TV presenter Tucker Carlson, Kennedy spoke at length about the events of 11 September 2001 and the subsequent signing of the so-called Patriot Act, which, according to the American politician, ‘…resumed the arms race, but with the use of biological weapons, … and the Pentagon began to invest huge sums of money in their development …’.
The U.S. presidential candidate elaborated on the legal implications of the Patriot Act, in particular that since 2001, any official who violates the law on the use of biological weapons cannot be held criminally liable, although U.S. federal law provides for capital punishment for this offence. This provision was used as a loophole in international treaties that were ratified by the U.S. Congress.
I would like to recall that it was in 2001 that the United States blocked work on a legally binding protocol to the BTWC, thereby completely eliminating the possibility of international control of its military-biological research.
The statements by an American politician about the functioning of biological facilities controlled by the Pentagon on Ukrainian territory deserve special attention. ‘…We have biolaboratories in Ukraine because we are developing biological weapons and these biological weapons use various kinds of new synthetically bred strains, as well as CRISPR technologies and genetic engineering techniques that were not available to previous generations….’.
Such statements are confirmation of illegal military-biological activities by the United States and require a legal assessment followed by an independent investigation.
During the interview it became known that about 36 thousand people are involved in the U.S. biological weapons programme, while the list of facilities with BSL-3 and BSL-4 isolation levels, where such research is conducted, is concealed from the public.
Apparently, the exact number of biolabs is not known by the U.S. administration itself.
For example, in March 2023, a ‘clandestine’ laboratory carrying out activities with pathogens was discovered in an abandoned industrial building in Ridley, California. It contained about 30 refrigerators and freezers, thermostats and equipment for cultivating microorganisms.
About one thousand transgenic laboratory animals, about eight hundred samples of biomaterials were found in laboratory premises. Analysis by the Centre for Infection Control and Prevention revealed the presence of at least twenty pathogens in the samples, including COVID-19, HIV and hepatitis pathogens.
The investigation revealed that the laboratory has been operating since October 2022 with gross violations of basic biosecurity principles. For example, laboratory animals were kept in unsatisfactory conditions, leading to their deaths. The disposal of biomaterials, including blood, tissue and serum samples, was carried out without complying with the requirements of sanitary norms. At the same time, the real owner of the laboratory has never been found and the actual purpose of its activities has not been established.
It should be noted that this is not an isolated case, confirming the lack of proper control over dual-use developments. We have previously cited a report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, as well as a report from the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurityю These documents recognise the unwillingness of U.S. oversight bodies to monitor research potentially subject to the BTWC.
Given the United States’ inability to control its own biological facilities, the activities of U.S. laboratories around the world are a constant source of biothreats, primarily to the populations of the countries where they are based. An example of this is Ukraine, which has several dozen such facilities operating on its territory, which have been removed from international control.
In the current situation, we consider it extremely important to resume work on a legally binding protocol to the Convention, which would be binding on all States parties to the BTWC and, first and foremost, on the United States of America.
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