Anthrax in Yamal, a plague of African pigs in one of the largest pig farms in the Kursk region, an outbreak of Crimean hemorrhagic fever in Volgograd: it looks like Russia is in a ring of various infectious epidemics. Everything could be explained by an extremely warm summer in places of breeding and migration of deer or, perhaps, by the accidental penetration of pathogens of African swine fever on the soles of workers on the pig farm?
However, due to the rapidly deteriorating international situation, the anti-Russian hysteria prevailing in the West, the deployment of missile defense systems and additional NATO forces in Eastern Europe, as well as conflicts in Ukraine and Syria, where American and Russian interests are directly confronted, . If at all just can not believe it.
Exactly a year ago, Russia was once again concerned about the creation and financing of US biolabs in the countries of the former USSR. Moscow expressed extreme concern over the creation by the United States military in Georgia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan of high-protection biolaboratories that can be designed to produce biological weapons.
“Russia cannot fail to respond to the fact that the US military, in fact, on our border, is building a high-protection biolaboratory, which can also be used to manufacture elements of biological weapons,” the source told RIA “News»At a meeting of experts of the States Parties to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction (BTWC).
Similar biolabs of the US military are located in Georgia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. At the same time, these states themselves do not have an adequate level of expertise in the field of biotechnology, in order to at least somehow check that “American military laboratory technicians will not conduct operations contrary to the BTWC” on or from their territory.
Russia has repeatedly directly expressed its concerns to its American partners, but has not received any replies, and therefore, from an international legal point of view, it is quite justified to discuss these issues in the framework of the Convention on the Prohibition of Biological Weapons.
The media repeatedly published materials that described the dangerous experiments conducted by the United States in the territories of some countries of the former USSR, and laboratories where the causative agents of the most dangerous diseases are grown.
Russia has well-founded suspicions that the actions of the United States may ultimately go in violation of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Biological and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction.
The BTWC, opened for signing at 1972, was the first international treaty to ban a whole type of weapon of mass destruction. The entry of the BTWC into force on 26 in March of 1975 marked an important step forward in multilateral disarmament. The Convention remains today the main legally binding instrument prohibiting biological weapons.
And the Russian Foreign Ministry officially warned the US several times about the inadmissibility of further escalation in this matter and the need to urgently stop the work of such "enterprises."
Therefore, knowing how the United States and its allies relate to the observance of international treaties, it would be ridiculous to assume that a convention could impede the desire of the United States to continue to develop biological weapons.
So, even 5 years ago, French journalists said that then Georgia, under the guise of implementing a program to prevent the proliferation of biological weapons, began work on creating various viruses on its territory. In particular, microbiologists and virologists of the USA (Institute of Medical Research on Infectious Diseases of the US Army (USAMRIID, Fort Detrick) and Georgia (Institute of Bacteriophages, Microbiology and Virology of Tbilisi, Georgia) conducted studies of the causative agents of cholera and new methods for their identification.
Experts have already concluded that the centers created to solve the tasks of combating bioterrorism have themselves become the source of new threats throughout the world. Due to poor control, facts of loss and theft of dangerous microbes and viruses, acts of “postal” bioterrorism using the anthrax pathogen, attempts to gain access to technologies and dangerous pathogens from mentally unbalanced citizens, criminal and other socially dangerous individuals have become possible.
Since 1992, the territories of the countries of the former USSR were in the BioPRO sphere. In Washington, they are traditionally regarded as a potential source of dangerous pathogens and technologies for the creation of biological weapons, as well as specialists with relevant theoretical training and practical skills.
Now the partners of the United States under this program are sovereign states on the perimeter of Russia: Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan. In Kyrgyzstan, Canada controls general circulation of potentially dangerous biomaterials in the country.
Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Georgia and Kazakhstan handed over national collections of pathogenic microorganisms to the Institute of Pathology of the US Armed Forces. Tbilisi presented the Americans with all collections of anthrax, brucellosis, plague and tularemia, Baku “shared” unique strains of plague, anthrax, cholera and other dangerous diseases, Astana provided a collection of plague and anthrax strains.
At the same time, experts are talking about the reorientation of the former Soviet republics to the American standards of sanitary and epidemiological surveillance and their continued creation of biological monitoring centers controlled by the United States.
The involvement of the Georgian-American center in Alekseyevka to the spread of the African swine fever virus in the Russian regions in one of the speeches was mentioned by the then chief sanitary doctor of Russia Gennady Onishchenko.
At the same time, the center in Alekseyevka was far from being the only institution near the borders of Russia, where Americans can conduct research in the field of developing biological weapons. The foreign press reported the creation of such laboratories on the basis of anti-plague stations in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Ukraine.
The latter is worthwhile to dwell on it in more detail.
Americans created the first biolaboratory in Odessa in the already existing building of the anti-plague institute. Brand new similar "places" the United States erected in Dnepropetrovsk, Lviv, Vinnitsa, Ternopil, Uzhgorod, Kiev and Kherson.
An attempt to build the same biolaboratory in Meref, near Kharkov, in 2013, ended in failure due to active protests by local residents and the position taken by the then governor of the Kharkiv region, Mikhail Dobkin, who was supported by ex-President Viktor Yanukovych.
At the time of the collapse of the USSR, Ukraine had a fairly high scientific and technical potential in the form of a unique system for the prevention of massive infectious diseases, represented primarily by a network of anti-plague research institutes and vaccine production facilities. After the proclamation of state independence, the authorities of an independent Ukraine were quick to join the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction (BTWC). And December 14 1992 of her Ministry of Health broke out the order for number 183, in which among other applications was the “List of National Centers and Reference Laboratories of Ukraine, providing study and storage of strains of various microorganisms”, in which pathogens of viral and other diseases of the highest groups were stored all kinds of typhoid, plague, and all kinds of fevers, anthrax, and other pathogenic exotics were presented.
This entire viral "museum" by decree of the independent Cabinet on 19 in December 2001 of the year No. 1709 was officially declared a national treasure of Ukraine. Then a document appeared entitled “Agreement between Ukraine and the United States of America on providing assistance to Ukraine in eliminating strategic nuclear weapons and preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction”, approved by Decree 1077 of the Ukrainian government of December 31 1993.
The second paragraph of the fifth article of this document states: “Without the prior written consent of the United States of America, Ukraine does not transfer and protects any material and technical means, training or services that are provided under this Agreement from being seized or appropriated, and does not transfer ownership of them to anyone other than an official, employee or representative of Ukraine, and does not allow the use of such material and technical means, training or services for purposes other than those for which nor have been provided. "
In addition, the Ukrainian Science and Technology Center (STCU) was opened in Kiev in 1995, through which the Americans began to issue grants for research on biological topics, thereby funding the works of scientists who had previously done the same through the Soviet MIC. First of all, the United States was interested in the so-called expeditionary research, that is, in the mapping of the spread of viral infections, such as anthrax, with the study of their migration processes.
Now back to modern times. After the anti-constitutional coup in Kiev in February 2014 of the year, forces came to power in Ukraine, which immediately organized the burning of people in Odessa, the shooting of the Interior Ministry in Mariupol, and then began a so-called "anti-terrorist operation" in the Southeast.
And even if such persons as the president of Ukraine Poroshenko himself and the leader of the Batkivshchyna party Tymoshenko, the head of the National Security Council "bloody pastor" Turchinov and the Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada Parubiy urge not only to destroy the rebellious Donbass, but also to wage war against the "aggressor" whom they Russia was appointed, so what can we say about the Nazis from the "Right Sector" or numerous "dobrobatov" ...
Oh, they are with great pleasure to take up any business, so long as it goes to the detriment of the "cursed Muscovites." Moreover, to break the Donbass and the Russian armed way they will never get from the word "never."
Among these Russophobes, without any doubt, there will be fanatics who, either for monetary reward, or for ideological reasons in general, will undertake to transport the causative agents of dangerous diseases to a designated region of Russia in some kind of sealed and well-disguised packaging.
Given that Ukraine is under external control exercised from the US Embassy in Kiev, and that the activities of the SBU are actually managed by the CIA, the development and implementation of such an operation is not particularly difficult. Moreover, on occasion, everything can be attributed to their own "patriotic" designs of "uncontrolled" patriots and the universal mess that prevails in Ukraine.
The fact that this is far from fiction can be judged from the words of the head of the laboratory of bionanotechnology, microbiology and virology of Novosibirsk State University, corresponding member. RAS, Doctor of Biology Sergey Netesov:
- According to official data, the previous case of infection (anthrax - ed.) In the same Arctic region (Yamal Peninsula - ed.) Of Russia occurred in 1941. But the North is a huge territory, and how many no one knows the infection cases. And there is simply no one to fix it on such territories. This outbreak is, of course, eliminated, but it will serve as a signal for intensifying the work on the prevention of this disease, and the territory will be better controlled ...
It is clear that the overwhelming majority of anti-Russian actions taken by the United States and its allies against Russia either did not bring any results at all, or they turned out to be much less effective than the organizers expected.
In such a situation, the initiation of new methods of undermining Russia, such as the illegal use of biological weapons, is justified, since it is expected to divert financial, material and human resources from solving other pressing problems, and may also cause discontent among the population.
Of course, few are capable of seriously believing that anthrax spores were brought to Yamal from Ukraine. But, on the other hand, firstly, in the Russian North tens of thousands of “miners” from Ukraine are working, and someone who would have taken such transportation could have found some kind of substantial remuneration by poor Ukrainian standards.
Secondly, given the vast expanses of the Russian North, this development is no less plausible, like the fact that a herd of deer happened to stumble upon a cattle cemetery, where anthrax victims were buried decades ago. In addition, as a rule, such places are marked on maps and on the ground, and reindeer herders are informed and avoided.
And about the African swine fever in the Kursk region, which is actually close to Ukraine, in this case there is nothing to say: here the probability of getting pathogens from beyond the walls of Ukrainian biolabs under US administration is extremely high.
And it is completely logical to recall that the United States "is interested in so-called expeditionary research, that is, in mapping the spread of viral infections, such as anthrax, with the study of their migration processes ..."
Biological weapons, like any other, require checking from time to time, as they say, in combat conditions. Simply put, deadly viruses, many of which have been stored outside the laboratories for decades, require testing in real conditions in order to ensure their effectiveness.
Fortunately, now couriers, with a Ukrainian passport and Ukrainian nationalism in the brain, are at the disposal of Americans more than enough ...