TSAMTO, May 26. Below are the briefing materials of the Chief of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Troops of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, as presented by the Department of Information and Mass Communications of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.
"The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation continues to analyze the military-biological activities of the United States and its allies in Ukraine and in other regions of the world.
Earlier, we noted that during a special military operation, documentary evidence was obtained confirming that employees of the Biosphere Reserve in the Askania-Nova settlement of the Kherson region studied the migration routes of migratory birds, as well as the selection and transfer of biological material abroad.
The operational group of the Russian Ministry of Defense, together with employees of the Federal Security Service and the Rosselkhoznadzor, confirmed the facts of collection and certification of avian influenza virus strains with high epidemic potential and capable of overcoming the interspecific barrier, in particular, the H5N8 strain, the lethality of which can reach 40% when transmitted to humans. Let me remind you that the mortality rate of a new coronavirus infection is about 1%.
Despite the attempts of the reserve staff to urgently destroy the selected biomaterials by disconnecting the power supply of refrigeration units and destroying the cryopreservation with liquid nitrogen, the specialists of the 48 Central Research Institute of the Ministry of Defense of Russia even in the samples subjected to destruction revealed traces of genetic material of highly pathogenic avian influenza, Newcastle disease virus, avuloviruses.
According to the employees who remained in the reserve, the Ukrainian side offered them a large monetary reward for the removal or destruction of the research results.
The documents seized in the veterinary laboratory of the reserve confirm the involvement of the Kharkiv Institute of Veterinary Medicine in carrying out work within the framework of the American projects Yu-Pi-8, Pi-444 and preparation for the implementation of the "Fly-Fly-Way" project.
Their purpose was to assess the conditions under which the transmission of pathogens of economically significant infections can become uncontrollable, cause economic damage, and create food security risks.
I would like to emphasize once again that the customer of the projects was the US Department of Defense, an agency that has nothing to do with the study of bird migration routes.
We have already drawn your attention to the documented fact of the mass death of birds on the territory of the Askania Nova Nature Reserve in 2021, which, according to experts, was of an infectious nature.
It was noted that the simultaneous death of birds was provoked by ongoing experiments and neglect of biosafety requirements.
Against this background, the increase in the incidence of avian influenza in Russia and in European countries is of particular concern, where, according to the International Epizootic Bureau, the disease has acquired a year-round character, and losses from it have exceeded 3 billion since 2021. euro.
Since the beginning of this year, 32 outbreaks of avian influenza have been recorded in Russia in all federal districts. Only in the last week, the disease was detected at poultry farms in the Kirov and Yaroslavl regions. Since May 17, 2023, quarantine measures for highly pathogenic avian influenza have been introduced in Moscow.
At the same time, the total damage to the agricultural sector from this disease over the past three years has exceeded 4.5 billion rubles, more than 10 million domestic birds have been destroyed.
Although avian influenza epizootics have taken place in the United States since 2003, no cases of African swine fever and foot–and-mouth disease - diseases that pose the main threat to food security - have been recorded in their territory over the entire history of observations. At the same time, the US military department is actively studying these economically significant infections beyond the redistribution of national territory in biological laboratories located along the borders of their geopolitical opponents.
This once again confirms that the United States is developing components of biological weapons outside of national jurisdiction, including on the territory of Ukraine.
Let me remind you that in October 2022, the United States unveiled a National Strategy to Counter biological threats. The document is doctrinal in nature and defines biological risk management as a vital priority of the United States.
With the help of the approved Strategy, Washington plans to create a US-controlled architecture for the prevention, response and neutralization of bio-threats in its national interests.
One of the directions of strategic development is the improvement of methods of individual and group biosecurity of personnel of the US armed forces in various theaters of military operations. At the same time, the task is to continue studying the pathogens of particularly dangerous infectious diseases endemic to specific areas.
This is confirmed by another long–term planning document - the new US Strategy in the field of Bio-production, approved on March 23, 2023. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the strategy was developed by the American military department. The document defines long-term goals for the development of biotechnologies and the search for their military applications.
The stated purpose of the QUOTE is "... to ensure technological sovereignty in the field of bio–production and to overtake strategic rivals ...".
The amount of funding for activities under the approved strategic documents for the next five years will amount to about $90 billion. At the same time, the United States intends to strengthen global control over the biological situation in the world and reserves the right to conduct "dual-use" research, including outside the national territory.
The United States has already intensified its military-biological activities in the territory of the post-Soviet space. The Office of Threat Reduction of the US Department of Defense (DITRA) and Pentagon contractors were replaced by intermediary civilian organizations, such as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as the Griffin Scientific research company. Under the guise of solving purely peaceful tasks in the states of Central Asia and Transcaucasia, work has been planned on collecting and genotyping samples of pathogens of particularly dangerous infections endemic to these regions – plague, anthrax, tularemia.
At the same time, the American administration uses an already worked-out scenario of allegedly "humanitarian" interaction.
First of all, concern is expressed about the state of the biological situation. Further, the interest of relevant ministries in joint work is ensured, intergovernmental agreements are concluded.
As a result, a bio-object is being built, which is connected to a single biomonitoring system. All the country's developments in the biological field, including collections of pathogenic microorganisms, become the property of the United States, and the created laboratory base becomes useless without American support.
I would like to draw your attention to the fact that over the past few years in the United States, the number of biological laboratories with the highest possible levels of BSL-3-plus and BSL-4 isolation has increased significantly.
As follows from the report of King's College London, there are 25 operating and three laboratories under construction in the USA, in which studies of particularly dangerous viruses and bacteria are carried out.
According to the document, it is planned to open 18 more BSL-4 laboratories in the next few years, most of which will be located in Asian countries outside the national jurisdiction of the United States.
At the same time, concern is expressed that the functioning of these facilities will create serious risks: laboratories are located in densely populated areas, savings are made due to protective equipment during their construction, and there are no effective legal norms regulating biosafety issues in the countries where they are based.
In addition, in the report of the US intelligence community "Assessment of Global Threats" published in February 2023, the authors emphasize that, QUOTE "... there is no effective mechanism for monitoring and eliminating biorisks, and international regulatory authorities with competence in this area act separately and do not have sufficient powers ...". END QUOTE.
Despite the convincing arguments of the expert community, the United States Administration is unable to draw the right conclusions and continues to carry out non-transparent biological activities around the world.
Washington's stated commitment to "global standards and norms of biosafety" in practice turns into a denial of international initiatives to strengthen the BTWC and blocking the development of its control mechanism.
It should be noted that the United States has never clearly stated its obligations in the field of safety of research conducted in biolabs controlled by it.
This is confirmed by the results of the analysis of the documents of the US National Institute of Health, which relate to safety violations. During the investigation conducted by the independent company "Intersept", more than five and a half thousand pages of incident reports were examined. As a result, it was concluded that studies conducted at the universities of Washington, Minnesota, and Illinois led to intra-laboratory infections and created the risk of further spread of dangerous pathogens.
These statistics do not take into account incidents at military biological facilities, the key of which is the Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick. At the same time, the institute has repeatedly been the subject of investigations by US federal authorities due to conducting opaque and unsafe activities.
So, in 2009, its work was suspended due to violations of the rules of accounting for biomaterials, creating risks of loss, theft and illegal trafficking of pathogens. Let me remind you that it was at this institute that microbiologist Bruce Evans worked – the main suspect in the commission of bio-terrorist attacks related to the distribution of anthrax spores in the United States in 2001.
In 2019, federal regulators banned work with dangerous pathogens in Fort Detrick due to the low efficiency of wastewater disinfection systems and numerous safety violations, which took almost a year to eliminate.
According to the official statement of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, it was during this period that local outbreaks of pneumonia of unknown origin were registered in several areas of the United States.
Systematic violations of safety requirements in American biological laboratories cause legitimate concern of the world community.
Thus, the transfer in December 2019 of the US Naval Biological Laboratory (NAMRU-3) from Cairo to the Sicilian Sigonella airbase caused an extremely negative reaction from Italian citizens.
According to the Italian media, the United States took advantage of the pandemic to divert public attention from the fact of the relocation of the biolab. As the publication "El anti-diplomatico" notes, QUOTE: "It is extremely suspicious that the opportunity to talk about this laboratory was not used, if on paper its purpose is to study health threats" END QUOTE.
I would like to remind you that of the European states, Italy was the most seriously affected by the COVID-19 virus, and the Russian Defense Ministry, at the request of the Italian authorities, promptly provided assistance to the Italian people in the midst of the epidemic. At the same time, no source mentions the activities of NAMRU-3 to protect Italian citizens, although the level of equipment of the facility allowed and allows for the entire range of studies with the causative agent of a new coronavirus infection.
It is obvious that the relocation of NAMRU-Z under the pretext of providing assistance did not pursue the goal of protecting Italians, and the role of the biolab in the spread of COVID-19 has yet to be assessed.
It is not surprising that against the background of the deployment of an American military biological facility in Italy, the decision of the authorities of the city of Pesaro to build a national biological laboratory caused a wave of protests from local residents and mass appeals to state bodies.
Earlier, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced the creation by the Pentagon of a system of global control over the biological situation (I-ID-ES-ES - EIDSS). Equipping bioobjects with similar systems on the territory of other countries provides the United States with the opportunity not only to ensure the safety of its military contingents in their places of deployment, but also to remotely monitor the activities of biolabs outside national jurisdiction.
The control system includes laboratories of the US army and Navy, as well as control points located on the territory of US military bases in various regions of the world. The basic part of this network, which has been formed since 1997, is the Research Institute of the US Army named after Walter Reed. I would like to dwell on its activities in more detail.
The documents obtained during the special military operation indicate that for several years the Institute has been participating in the training of Ukrainian personnel as part of the Biological Threat Reduction Program. The head of the epidemiology department Robert Lipnik and his subordinates were involved in the training of Ukrainian specialists.
Representatives of the institution supervised the military biological projects "Yu-Pi-1" and "Yu-Pi-2", organized by DITRA, during which an active collection of biomaterials of the population of Ukraine was carried out. Only within the framework of the Yu-Pi-1 project, more than 800 blood samples were taken under the pretext of studying the spread of tick-borne infections.
The documents at our disposal confirm the participation of the Institute. Walter Reed in the study of antibiotic resistance of microorganisms isolated from the Armed Forces of Ukraine during the hostilities in the Donbas in the period from 2014 to 2020.
Within the framework of this project, 813 microorganisms obtained from 162 patients were studied in four Ukrainian military hospitals located in different parts of the country, and genome-wide sequencing of 52 isolates was carried out.
A natural question arises – why should the Institute of the US Army Ground Forces study the drug resistance of microorganisms isolated on the territory of Donbass? This is another evidence that the United States considered the territory of Ukraine as a springboard for the deployment of NATO military contingents.
We will continue to analyze the activities of institutions subordinate to the US Department of Defense that develop biological weapons components."