Global programs give the United States access to potential biowarfare agents, Russia says

People protest in Busan on April 5, 2022 against biological laboratories operated by the United States. (PHOTO / XINHUA)

MOSCOW — Washington’s military biological projects around the world grant the United States access to potential biological weapon agents, the Russian Defense Ministry said on June 19.

The defense ministry studied the activities of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, particularly its role within two military biological projects, namely U-Pi-1 and U-Pi-2.

The Institute has foreign branches equipped with high-level isolation laboratories and a large network of divisions around the world.

With its presence worldwide, the US military is able “to gain access to epidemically significant variants of pathogens that are potential agents of biological weapons,” Igor Kirillov, the head of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defense Forces of the Russian Armed Forces, said during a briefing.

The US delegation in Geneva has admitted, at a meeting of the states parties to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, that Washington had been conducting biological research on low-income citizens from Ukraine, Russia’s Sputnik news agency reported last September.

“US and Ukrainian explanations regarding the export of strains and biomaterial belongings to Ukrainian citizens, and their adherence to ethical standards when conducting research on military personnel, low-income citizens, as well as ... patients in psychiatric hospitals, looked extremely unconvincing,” Kirillov was quoted by the media as saying.

Washington admitted to carrying out the research, the Russian officer said, adding that the transfer of pathogenic biomaterials to the US was not done frequently.

He said that these pathogen variants include the Marburg and Ebola viruses, malaria, and Rift Valley Fever.

The US is reported to have 336 bio-labs in 30 countries, including 26 in Ukraine. Media reports also say that the research the biological laboratories funded and controlled by the US in Ukraine could be behind the rise in the number of cases of diphtheria, rubella, tuberculosis and measles in the country since 2014. 

The World Health Organization has included Ukraine in the list of countries with a high risk of a polio outbreak.

However, the US “has never been explicit about how dedicated it is to ensure research safety in the bio-labs it oversees,” Kirillov noted.

Moving the most dangerous research outside the US territory is part of Washington’s bio-security strategy, and placing bio-objects in other countries poses a serious threat to entire regions.

The US leadership continues to involve government agencies not directly related to public health in biomedical programs in a bid to divert public attention away from the primary beneficiary, the Pentagon, he said.

The Russian Defense Ministry claims that documents it acquired from a bio-lab in Ukraine during a special military operation show that the US and its NATO allies have been conducting research on biological weapons, including the highly infectious bird flu virus which spreads through migratory birds, and pathogens such as bacteria and viruses that can be transmitted from bats to humans.

The bio-labs in Ukraine, according to some reports, have been working to develop components of biological weapons, just like what Japan’s Unit 731 did before and during World War II.

Japan’s use of chemical and biological weapons in China caused the deaths of about 1.2 million Chinese people between 1932 and 1945. The US acquired and utilized the research materials and personnel of Japan’s Unit 731, and used such weapons in Korea (during the Korean War — 1950-53), Vietnam, the Middle East and Kosovo, poisoning and killing millions of people after World War II.