Briefing by the Chief of Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Protection Troops of Russian Armed Forces Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov on analysis of documents relating to U.S. military and biological activities
The Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation continues to analyse the military and biological activities of the United States of America and its allies in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world.
We have previously cited the names of those involved in U.S. military biology programmes. They include officials from the U.S. Department of Defense, Pentagon contractors, U.S. biotechnology corporations, Ukrainian government institutions and private companies.
Today we show more personalities of the list of Pentagon biological research subjects. These include:
Eliot Jacobs Pearlman, the head of International HIV/AIDS and TB Institute (NGO), Kiev, he was directly involved in the establishment of the laboratory facilities for the implementation of military biological research in Ukraine.
Gregory Glass, a professor emeritus at the Emerging Pathogens Institute, Florida State University. He was involved in studying the tularaemia pathogen in Ukraine. He was involved in the UP-8 project (Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever virus and hantavirus dissemination in Ukraine).
Andrew Pekosz, an American microbiologist and Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
He was involved as one of the lead consultants for the UP-2 Project (Application of geo-information systems, remote surveillance and laboratory diagnosis for the detection of tularaemia and anthrax in humans and animals in Ukraine).
Ukrainian nationals are among the perpetrators of US military-biological projects:
Natalia Rodina is the deputy director general of the Kiev Regional Laboratory Centre of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine and a former employee of the U.S. company Black & Veatch. Since 2020, she has been advisor to the Commander of the AFU Medical Forces on laboratory and diagnostic activities.
Yelena Nesterova is the Director of the Ukrainian Institute for Public Health Research She coordinated the activities of Labyrinth Global Health and liaised between Ukrainian government agencies and Metabiota.
Fleeing from responsibility for their involvement in bioweapons projects, many of the individuals involved left Ukraine.
In order to stop any leaks, the U.S. administration is taking immediate action to locate and retrieve material on the Pentagon's illegal activities. Through the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine (STCU), work is carried out on two fronts: collecting data on the location of staff already experienced in so-called 'Ukrainian projects' and searching for new specialists in the field of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) development.
Please take note of the questionnaire sent to STCU online users who are enrolled in special courses. The requirement for participation is dual-use research expertise.
From 24-26 April 2023, online training will take place with the selected candidates, and a in-person meeting in Warsaw is planned in parallel.
During the training, participants will be invited to continue working on closed projects in and outside Ukrainian territory.
We do not rule out the possibility that under the cover of such courses, efforts may be made to plan biological weapons provocations and to start an information campaign against the Russian Federation.
The U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DITRA) is using the capabilities of biologists not only from Ukraine, but also from the Central Asian and Transcaucasian states to carry out its tasks. The US administration has work in this area scheduled to last at least until 2025.
Funding for dual-use projects is provided by the U.S. military through a grant system. The International Science and Technology Centre and STCU are in charge of allocating the funds. The organisation is headed by Ronald Frank Lehman, former head of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.
I would like to draw attention to the names of individual ISTC projects without indicating their territorial affiliation.
Project 2410 'Assessment of the natural resistance of the brucellosis pathogen in domestic and wild animals (possibility of brucellosis transmission to humans)' A remarkable fact about the research is that experts from the University of Florida participated in it.
Project 2513 investigates the risk factors and molecular properties of environmentally resistant virulent Enterobacteriaceae. The objective of the study is to identify microorganism strains that are resistant to every known type of antibiotic.
Project 2545 involves simulating the evolution of a few bunyavirus species that are extremely dangerous to people. The UK Research and Innovation is supporting the research on fusing genetic material from harmful viruses.
Remember that the US, its armed forces, and allies are to be protected by the ISTC's biological threat reduction program. This once again confirms that Washington sees the post-Soviet space as a foothold for the deployment of NATO military units.
In the case of Ukraine, we see how imposed by the collective West funding of military-biological programmes leads to the loss of national biological sovereignty and the undermining of our own scientific and technological potential in the field of biological, food, and pharmaceutical security.
The Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation has previously reported on 'directed evolution' research by U.S. pharmaceutical companies, the so-called Big Pharma, as well as corruption and collusion with U.S. government agencies related to the development and production of vaccine drugs.
It was stated that regulators were undermining present safety and quality norms in favour of corporate business interests. Federal agency personnel occupy important positions in pharmaceutical companies as a result of approving the use of pharmaceuticals without following regulatory procedures.
They include former employees of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Food and Drug Administration: Mark McClellan, current Johnson & Johnson board member; Scott Gottlieb, Pfizer board member; Stephen Hahn, chief medical officer of Flagship Pioneering, a company directly linked to Moderna.
According to the information we have, collusion between officials and the manufacturers of Pfizer's anti-covaccine vaccine has allowed drugs with serious side-effects to be put into circulation. However, at the time the vaccine was approved, Pfizer had actual evidence of an increased risk of serious cardiovascular abnormalities following vaccination.
According to the company's confidential assessment, patients who receive the COVID-19 vaccine are more likely to suffer myocarditis. Since April 2021, Moderna has reported an increase in cases of myocarditis and pericarditis in the United States following vaccination with mRNA vaccines, especially in male adolescents and young adults over 16 y.o. Pathological changes usually occurred within a few days of vaccination, and more often occurred after a second dose.
It is to be reminded that at the request of DITRA and without consideration for any ethical standards, such experiments of very toxic medications with undiscovered dangers of side effects were carried out on Ukrainian civilians and AFU servicemen. This seems to be the norm for the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, which aims to maximise profits, and its implementation is strongly supported by the U.S. Democratic Party.
The Ministry of Defence has already noted contradictory statements by U.S. political elites about the cessation of Pentagon work in biolaboratories in Ukraine.
Take note of the minutes from the 20 October 2022 meeting of a working group of U.S. and Ukrainian specialists on ideas for a Biological Threat Reduction Plan in Ukraine, chaired by DITRA officials.
According to the document, despite a forced pause due to the special military operation, activities under the Programme have now resumed. The main objectives at this stage are to continue the construction of biolaboratories in Ukraine and to expand the format of training for Ukrainian biologists.
The Russian Defence Ministry's revelations about the Pentagon's bioweapons activities are forcing Washington to make efforts to conceal the true nature of the work being done.
Thus, it was decided to change the name of the Joint Biological Research programme, which is actually aimed at developing biological weapons components.
The programme has been renamed Biosurveillance Research, as indicated in the Minutes. According to the document, the military department intends to continue research on dangerous pathogens, collect biological material, and send it to the United States.
The Pentagon's plans to continue dual-use research on Ukrainian bio-objects and elsewhere in the world, with a change of programme name, are the result of an 'unclear' response from the international community due to the fear of a number of countries to go into confrontation with the U.S. authorities.
The US Department of State has produced a series of publications in which it attempts to cast doubt on the documented facts of its illegal biological research. On 14 March 2023, for example, a bulletin was published on the U.S. State Department website, once again accusing Russia of disinformation.
The pro-government U.S. media, including the Washington Post, have released State Department statements that flatly deny the established historical facts of the preparation of military-biological attacks in North Korea and China in the early 1950s while ignoring the information provided by the Russian Ministry of Defence in an effort to deflect the backlash from the Democratic Party.
The U.S. is proceeding from the logic that if earlier episodes cannot be proven, then all accusations of today's military-biological activities are disinformation.
It should be noted that the U.S. has never been explicit about how dedicated it is to ensuring research safety in the biolaboratories it oversees. The lack of transparency of their activities creates a risk of the spread of dangerous pathogens in areas where biocontainment facilities are located.
In a related event, a South Korean civil society organisation filed a lawsuit against the U.S. military in Korea and the Fort Detrick Biological Laboratory in August 2021 for breaking domestic law by smuggling harmful materials into American military locations.
The U.S. command in Korea was accused of smuggling dangerous materials into its military locations (in Pyeongchang and Gunsan) between November 2017 and January 2019. On 5 April 2022, South Koreans took to the streets to protest against U.S. biological laboratories near their military base in Busan.
Public demonstrations in Korea are not an uncommon occurrence. Earlier, mass demonstrations against U.S. biolaboratories took place in Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and Serbia.
In late February 2023, the International Secretary of the Irish Labour Party, Gary Granger, speaking at a conference on 'Strengthening the threat of the use of biological weapons by NATO against the background of aggravation of international contradictions', said that the threat of such weapons of mass destruction was growing every day.
Granger mentioned that 'Ukraine has U.S.-funded biological laboratories. This could lead to millions of casualties, including the risk of accidents'.
As we have repeatedly noted, moving the most dangerous research outside national territory is part of the United States' biosecurity strategy. The placement of bio-objects in third countries does not take into account the interests of local populations and poses a serious threat to entire regions.
I want to call your attention to a U.S. federal ministry's statement that the COVID-19 pandemic may have been caused by a virus leak from a Wuhan laboratory. The statement stresses that '...the disease has a laboratory origin and the virus is likely to have spread as a result of an accident...'.
The nuance is that this statement was made by the Department of Energy. A legitimate question arises: 'What does the U.S. Department of Energy have to do with combating bio-threats and implementing projects with dual-use features?'
The U.S. Department of Energy is seen by the Russian Ministry of Defence as being on par with the Pentagon in terms of being the primary planner and direct participant in military bioweapons efforts.
In 2023 alone, the Department of Energy officially allocated $105 mln for research as part of the Biopreparedness Research Virtual Environment project, which intends to study the epidemic spread of disease.
I draw your attention to the fact that specialists still have a number of questions about the strange variability and geographical origins of COVID-19 variants for most viruses. For example, the beta strain first appeared in South Africa and was detected in the UK in December 2020; the gamma strain in Brazil in January 2021 and the delta strain in India in June 2021. At the same time, each new version had improved properties in terms of their military-biological applications, causing increasing economic damage.
Despite extremely stringent anti-covalent measures, the emergence in 2022 of subvariants of the Omicron strain
BA-5.2 and BF-7 caused an avalanche-like increase in infections in China. It appears as if someone is taking deliberate action to 'amplify' the pathogenic properties of the virus and the pandemic is being artificially fuelled by 'throwing in' new 'improved' variants. So far, these questions remain unanswered.
In addition, reports indicate that United States leadership continues to involve non-core government agencies not directly related to public health in biomedical programmes, diverting attention away from the primary beneficiary, the Pentagon.
The U.S. Department of Energy 'dual-use biology' activities will be discussed in more detail next time.