Defense Ministry: Russia's special operation revealed the presence of 30 US biological laboratories in Ukraine
MOSCOW, April 6 — RIA Novosti. The Russian military has discovered 30 American biological laboratories in Ukraine, $ 32 million has been spent on their work since 2015, said Igor Kirillov, head of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Forces (RCBZ) at an informal meeting of the UN Security Council.
According to him, the infrastructure is involved in the work in three main areas: monitoring, collection of dangerous strains and the study of biological weapons agents. Russia, according to the representative of the army, "traces the system" in the deployment of laboratories outside the United States.
One of the priorities of research Kirillov called the study of anthrax, the causative agent of which "is characterized by high damaging ability and resistance in the environment." He presented the documents of the "Yu-Pi-2 project", whose tasks, according to the Ministry of Defense, included the identification of burial sites of dead animals, the selection of soil samples from anthrax cattle burial grounds. The department believes that the interest of American military biologists in the study of insect vectors in such places is also not accidental.
"Apparently, they analyzed the results of the anthrax outbreak in Yamal in 2016, during which cases of transmissible transmission of the disease through flies and horseflies were recorded. Given that the epidemic situation with anthrax in Ukraine remains safe, the question arises about the need for research conducted by the Pentagon and their true goals," Kirillov added.
Russia, as the head of the RCBZ troops noted, can "with a high degree of probability assert" that a strain of African swine fever with increased contagiousness was constructed in one of the laboratories subordinate to the Pentagon. He compared the spread of ASF from Georgia to Russia, EU countries and China since 2007 — everywhere there, the agency says, virus strains identical to the Georgia-2007 variety were found in samples from fallen animals.
"The direct economic damage to Russian enterprises alone from this disease amounted to more than $ 100 million, indirect losses exceeded $ 500 million," Kirillov said.
The military commander said that in the region of the deployment of the Lugar center (biolab in Tbilisi. — Editor's note) the situation is particularly deteriorating for diseases that are spread by insect vectors.
According to data from the website of the European Center for Disease Control and Prevention, there is a shift in the range of various species of mosquitoes, previously found only in southern countries, from Georgia to the territory of Russian regions.
Kirillov said that the spread of ticks also caused outbreaks of Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever in Stavropol and Rostov region.
