Chemical & Biological Warfare.

[TsarSamuil]

Russia Says US Expanding Bioweapons Labs in Europe.

RI 18 hours ago
Originally appeared at Free Beacon

Russia recently charged the Pentagon with expanding a network of biological weapons laboratories in Europe, a charge the State Department denies.

A new Russian national security strategy document describes the United States and NATO as threats and warns of the “uncertainty about instances of foreign states’ possession of biological weapons and their potential for developing and producing them.”

“The network of U.S. military-biological laboratories on the territory of states adjacent to Russia is being expanded,” says the strategy, made public Dec. 31.

U.S. officials and arms analysts said the Russian charge is false.

Blake Narendra, a spokesman for the State Department’s arms control, verification and compliance bureau, said the United States is in full compliance with the Biological Weapons Convention, which bans production and stockpiling of germ weapons.

“The United States government supports public and animal health laboratories around the world whose mission it is to safely and securely detect and report the outbreaks of diseases,” Narendra told the Washington Free Beacon.

“There is no research or storage at these facilities involving biological or any other kind of weapon,” he said.

“Activities for peaceful purposes, to include the prevention of disease, are explicitly permitted under the BWC,” he continued, using an acronym for the Biological Weapons Convention.

Russian Embassy press spokesman Yury Melnik said the strategy does not accuse the United States of developing bioweapons.

“Paragraph 19 of the document mentions our concern related to the Pentagon’s bioactivities in neighboring countries,” Melnik said, noting a laboratory in the Republic of Georgia near Tbilisi.

“U.S. military professionals conduct research there,” he said.

Melnik said “press reports” did not specify identified Pentagon laboratories in Kazakhstan, Ukraine, West Africa and other states.

“That is obviously concerning,” Melnik said. “There is absolutely no transparency in U.S. biological activity abroad. Mere involvement of the military personnel raises questions whether [the] U.S. government’s actions are consistent with the BWC.”

Moscow’s charge appears based on Foreign Ministry accusations in June that the Pentagon is covertly researching the weaponization of diseases.

That claim, in a ministry statement, followed the disclosure in May that a Defense Department laboratory in Utah mistakenly sent live samples of anthrax, a contagious bacteria found in sheep and cattle that is deadly in humans, to numerous laboratories in the United States and several abroad.

The ministry stated that the Richard G. Lugar Center for Public and Animal Health Research, set up under the U.S. Cooperative Threat Reduction Program near Georgia’s capital of Tbilisi, is a secret U.S. research facility.

“American and Georgian authorities are trying to cover up the real nature of this U.S. military unit, which studies highly dangerous infectious diseases,” the ministry said, according to state-run Russian press reports.

“The Pentagon is trying to establish similar covert medico-biological facilities in other countries [in Russia’s neighborhood],” the ministry said.

Those charges also appeared to be a Russian response to the State Department’s charges that Moscow is violating the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Force Treaty with development of a new long-range cruise missile.

The State Department’s annual arms compliance report said Russia has not fully disclosed its past biological weapons programs.

During a House hearing in May 2014, Christopher Davis, a biological weapons expert and former member of the British Defense Intelligence Staff, testified that Russia covertly has maintained a biological arms program he called “the elephant in the room.”

“The elephant has remained in the room for 18 years, but just because we choose not to see him does not mean he is no longer there,” Davis said.

Davis stated that “Russia did not admit to the real size and capability of its biological weapons systems, that it did not get rid of all of them.”

According to Davis, Russian leader Vladimir Putin “like all his antecedents, would never give up such a key strategic military and diplomatic card.”

The Russians also have accused the U.S. government of undermining the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention.

A Pentagon report issued in July on the improper anthrax lab transfers stated that the samples are part of defense research into countering anthrax bioweapons. “It is critical for the department to have a strong countermeasures program to protect our warfighters against this dangerous organism,” the report said.

Former Pentagon strategic analyst Mark Schneider said the Russian assertions border on paranoia.

“The Russian claim of a ‘network of U.S. military-biological laboratories’ in NATO Europe is absurd and paranoid even by Russian standards,” Schneider said.

“We have not had an offensive biological weapons program since Richard Nixon,” he added.

Schneider said he agrees with the State Department that the claim is a distortion of the Threat Reduction program.

“Russian paranoia is dangerous,” Schneider said. “Overall, their new National Security Strategy signed by Putin on December 31, 2015, reads like a blueprint for a militaristic authoritarian state. NATO has finally recognized the significance of the Russian threat, particularly the Russian nuclear threat, but we are still doing little about it.”

The strategy also states that Russia’s “independent foreign and domestic policy” has prompted opposition for the United States and its allies that are “seeking to retain their dominance in world affairs.”

“The policy of containing Russia that they are implementing envisions the exertion of political, economic, military, and informational pressure on it,” the strategy says.

Russia has annexed Ukraine’s Crimea and is covertly destabilizing eastern Ukraine. Additionally, Moscow is aggressively building up its nuclear forces while Russian leaders, including Vladimir Putin, have issued unprecedented threats to use nuclear arms against NATO and the United States.

Russian defense analyst Pavel Felgenhauer says the biological weapons claims contained in the Russian strategy document may seem bizarre, “but for Russia’s rulers, such threats seem real.”

Felgenhauer wrote in a report Jan. 7 that Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Kremlin security council, alleged in October that U.S. “bio-war labs” had increased “20-fold,” and that the Pentagon is “deploying bio-weapon production labs in some [Commonwealth of Independent States] countries.”

“Today, Putin has underwritten into law these and other similar threat evaluations,” he stated in a report published by the Jamestown Foundation. “Russian countermeasures are surely forthcoming.”

The strategy “correctly reflects the overall Kremlin notion of Russia being besieged on all sides by the U.S. and its proxies, which purportedly seek to isolate, subvert, and cause internal political and social upheaval to bring about regime change in other countries,” Felgenhauer stated.

“In turn, Putin’s Russia is ready to defy and push back on all fronts — in Syria, in Ukraine, in the Arctic — and by all means available.”

[TsarSamuil]

Russia Defense Report: Nukes, Bugs, and Gas in Hybrid Wars.

South Front
Aug 17, 2016

[TsarSamuil]

Russia Destroys Chemical Weapons, and Faults U.S. for Not Doing So.

nytimes.com
By ANDREW HIGGINS SEPT. 27, 2017

MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia presided over the destruction of his country’s last declared chemical weapons on Wednesday, describing the elimination as a “historic event” and complaining that the United States has failed to purge its own chemical arsenal.

The carefully choreographed event, broadcast on state television, cast Mr. Putin as a peacemaker and determined defender of international law. It seemed designed to offset the reputation he has acquired for belligerence and the flouting of international norms amid Russia’s military interventions in Ukraine in 2014 and in Syria.

As has become customary at public appearances by the Russian president, Mr. Putin used the occasion to take a dig at Washington. He suggested that it was playing a devious double game by pushing back the American goal of eliminating its chemical arms, which is not scheduled to happen for six years.

The United States, he said, “is unfortunately not observing the deadline for destroying chemical weapons” based on treaty obligations. “They have pushed the date back three times, citing lack of budget funding. Frankly, this sounds strange, but whatever.”

In Washington, a State Department official said that the United States “fully complies” with the treaty and had continued to destroy the remnants of its stockpile, which are stored in Pueblo, Colo., and Richmond, Ky. “The United States remains committed to the complete destruction of its declared chemical weapons stockpile by the end of 2023,” the official said.

Both Russia and the United States — which hold the world’s biggest stockpiles — were supposed to destroy all of their chemical weapons by 2012 under an international agreement, the Chemical Weapons Convention, that they each signed in 1993 and which went into force in 1997. The final deadline for the elimination of chemical weapons was initially set for 2007. But with neither of the two countries close to meeting that goal, the deadline was extended to 2012.

Neither Russia nor the United States met that new deadline either, although Mr. Putin boasted on Wednesday that Russia was three years ahead of a 2020 deadline it had set for itself.

State television showed Mr. Putin ordering officials at a destruction center in the central Russian village of Kizner to dismantle the last shells containing lethal chemical agents. The green shells, each unscrewed by a machine in a sealed container, bore the words “Farewell, chemical weapons” painted in white in Russian.

Valery Kapashin, the head of the Russian agency responsible for the storage and destruction of chemical arms, told Mr. Putin by video link to the president’s country home outside Moscow: “Comrade commander-in-chief! The chemical weapons of the Russian Federation have now been entirely eliminated.”

Hamid Ali Rao, the deputy director of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, a Hague-based body that polices adherence to the 1993 convention, declared the event “a truly momentous occasion.”

He said that it “signals the full elimination of all chemical weapon stockpiles declared by the Russian Federation.”

[TsarSamuil]

U.S. and Uzbeks Agree on Chemical Arms Plant Cleanup.

nyTimes.com
By JUDITH MILLERMAY 25, 1999

The United States and Uzbekistan have quietly negotiated and are expected to sign a bilateral agreement today to provide American aid in dismantling and decontaminating one of the former Soviet Union's largest chemical weapons testing facilities, according to Defense Department and Uzbek officials.

Earlier this year, the Pentagon informed Congress that it intends to spend up to $6 million under its Cooperative Threat Reduction program to demilitarize the so-called Chemical Research Institute, in Nukus, Uzbekistan. Soviet defectors and American officials say the Nukus plant was the major research and testing site for a new class of secret, highly lethal chemical weapons called ''Novichok,'' which in Russian means ''new guy.''

The agreement to help Uzbekistan clean up the plant is part of wide-ranging cooperation between Tashkent and Washington since the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan became independent in 1991. Yesterday, American and Uzbek officials opened a series of meetings in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital.

Uzbek officials said in interviews earlier this year that, only after their country became independent, did they come to understand the legacy of pollution that had resulted from their designated role as the Soviet Union's major testing ground for chemical and biological weapons. ''We were shocked when we first learned the real picture,'' said Isan M. Mustafoev, the Deputy Foreign Minister, in an interview in Tashkent last March.

Alarmed by the health and environmental impact of the Soviets' use of Uzbekistan for the production and large-scale testing of illegal chemical and germ weapons, President Islam A. Karimov renounced weapons of mass destruction. Since then, his Government has worked closely with American defense officials, granting them access to sites whose counterparts in Russia are still off limits.

The Chemical Research Institute, which is in a closed military complex in Nukus in the semi-autonomous republic of Karakalpakstan, is a case in point. Uzbek officials said they were still uncertain what kind of chemical agents, or how many, were made and tested here and elsewhere on Uzbek soil.

Russia has refused to disclose the information, Uzbek officials complain, and some international arms inspectors have said there is no proof that the Nukus plant was used to produce chemical weapons, now banned.

After touring the plant last year, inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the Hague-based agency that oversees the 1993 treaty banning chemical weapons, concluded that the institute may have tested weapons but was not a production site.

Mr. Mustafoev, the Deputy Foreign Minister, scoffed at the finding, arguing there is plenty of evidence of such work at the lab that the Soviets built in 1986, closed to all but the Russian scientists who worked there, and abandoned only in 1992. American officials agreed, noting that a senior defector from the Soviet chemical weapons program, Vil S. Mirzayanov, who worked for more than 25 years in the Soviet chemical weapons program, has told them and later said publicly that the plant was built to produce batches, for testing, of Novichok binary weapons designed to escape detection by international inspectors.

Col. Islamov Abushair, the commander of the Uzbek military base in Nukus, highlighted what he called evidence of the secret Soviet chemical weapons program as he escorted this reporter recently on a rare tour of the plant, now closed. As the Soviet Union was crumbling, he explained, the more than 300 scientists at the plant packed up their deadly chemicals, their most sensitive equipment, manuals, and their test results and returned to their country.

Shards of brown glass laboratory bottles littered the plant's floors and the icy air of an early spring rushed through broken windows. In one room stood a large test chamber into which smaller animals were placed for testing.

Another room contained treadmills for dogs and dozens of testing harnesses, to cram dogs' muzzles into gas masks, leaving their bodies exposed. The device enabled scientists to expose either the dog's skin, or lungs, to lethal chemical agents, Uzbek and American experts said.

''This is the monstrous rubbish they left us,'' said Colonel Islamov, whose battalion of Uzbek soldiers now occupies the apartments in which elite Russian scientists and their families used to live.

Colonel Islamov and other Uzbek officials said their country lacked the money to decontaminate and convert the plant and stop the pollution caused by accidents, poor safety procedures and the disposal and dumping of chemical wastes and discarded weapons. A Pentagon official said yesterday that the United States would help Uzbekistan dismantle and decontaminate the complex ''to prohibit the proliferation of equipment from this pilot-scale production facility.''

Information is slowly emerging about hundreds of open-air chemical tests at the Nukus plant and on the neighboring Ustyurt Plateau in the Turgay steppe, an equally inhospitable desert several hundred miles west of the Aral sea, which Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan share.

Uzbek and American bio-warfare experts said that in 1988 thousands of antelope dropped dead on the plateau when the wind unexpectedly shifted during one of the chemical tests. Their carcasses are still buried in a pit on the range, they said.

The Soviet-run animal research institute in Tashkent, the capital, once produced snake and spider venom weapons for the K.G.B.'s assassination program, scientists said.

Abdusattor Abdukarimov, director of the Institute of Genetics and Plant Experimental Biology in Tashkent, now a civilian plant, said that in Soviet times it produced wheat pathogens and other microbes to attack plants.

[TsarSamuil]

Russia: Chemical warfare drill begins in Kursk.

Ruptly
Mar 22, 2018



Russian military personnel from the radiation, chemical and biological defence corps carried out successful clean-up drills at the Marshal Zhukov range in Kursk Region on Thursday.

In a simulation, a tactical ballistic missile OTR-21 Tochka hit the infrastructure and command posts of the terrorists who returned fire with high-precision missiles.

The troops covered OTR-21 Tochka with thermal smoke while radiation, chemical and biological defence troops conducted reconnaissance of the contaminated area.

After mapping the contamination zone, Thermal TMS-65D machines alongside radiation, chemical and biological defence troops, cleaned up the area and contaminated equipment.

[TsarSamuil]

Porton Down veterans awarded £3m compensation.

theguardian.com
Laura Smith, Owen Bowcott and Rob Evans
Thu 31 Jan 2008 17.08 GMT

Hundreds of veterans who were subjected to tests at the Porton Down chemical warfare installation are to be awarded compensation totalling £3m, the defence minister, Derek Twigg, announced today.
In a written statement to MPs, Twigg offered the government's first full apology to the servicemen, saying: "The government sincerely apologises to those who may have been affected."

The defence minister said the MoD would pay £8,300 to each of the 369 veterans - a total of just over £3m.

He said the sum was "in full and final settlement" of claims, and was being awarded without an admission of liability by the Ministry of Defence.

The award was welcomed by representatives of the veterans, who say they were tricked into taking part in tests at the Wiltshire facility during the cold war. Many believed they were helping to find a cure for the common cold.

A group of 369 servicemen affected launched legal action against the MoD last March, arguing that tests - including being sent to gas chambers and being exposed to nerve gas, mustard gas and teargas - had left them with health problems ranging from respiratory and skin diseases to cancer and psychological problems.

Eric Gow, chairman of the Porton Down Veterans' Group, said: "It has been a long and protracted battle for justice but today makes it all worthwhile.

"I am just so very sorry and angry that many of our comrades had to die before we reached this point - but I am sure they will be looking down on us today with some degree of satisfaction."

Ken Earl, group spokesman, said: "I am so pleased that settlement has at last been reached. It will allow our members to at last have some degree of closure on this issue."

But not everyone was so positive. Joe Kearns, a former radio aircraft engineer from Glasgow who spent time at Porton Down in the 1970s, said he only signed the deal reluctantly.

He said: "I haven't been able to work for 37 years. I couldn't even get a job as a hospital porter. I have short term memory problems. I'm really blind. I'm back and forth to hospital. I've had two hips replaced and spinal operations.

"It's the pure injustice. I have no option but to sign and accept the form. Otherwise they will wash their hands of us. I just don't want the MoD to walk away from this smelling of roses."

Lawyers for the veterans said their acceptance of the compensation and the apology brought to an end the group legal action against the MoD. Mediation on the settlement began in December last year.

Solicitor Alan Care, who has acted for the veterans since 1994, said: "Today is the culmination of well over a decade's work to obtain some justice and recognition for the veterans who have undoubtedly been treated poorly until now by the Ministry of Defence for so many years.

"Today we see a truly historic apology from the MoD and government who now 'sincerely apologise' to the veterans."

Solicitor Martyn Day said: "Today ends a very sorry chapter in the history of the Ministry of Defence. The treatment of the veterans was simply appalling.

"However, today's settlement and apology will, undoubtedly, go some way to healing the wounds that this episode caused. It is such a shame it has taken so long for this point to have been reached."

It is believed that as many as 12 veterans have died since the current legal case was launched.

Twigg said Britain owed a "debt" to those who took part in trials at Porton Down, adding: "The security of the country rested on these trials and the contribution of those who took part in them."

He added: "The government accepts that there were aspects of the trials where there may have been shortcomings and, where, in particular, the life or health of participants may have been put at risk."

Since 1916 more than 25,000 servicemen took part in tests at Porton Down, where scientists developed chemical weapons and protective equipment. It is the longest-running programme of chemical warfare tests on humans in the world.

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MoD released potentially lethal bacteria on London Tube, chemically experimented on soldiers.

RT.com
10 Aug, 2015 19:20

Potentially lethal biological agents were unleashed on an unsuspecting British public and chemical warfare was trialed on military personnel as part of Ministry of Defense (MOD) experiments carried out over decades, a shocking new book reveals.

In his latest work, entitled ‘Secret Science: A Century of Poison Warfare and Human Experiments,’ University of Kent historian Ulf Schmidt presents a series of case studies about covert state projects conducted between 1939 and 1989.

In one 1953 experiment, 20 year-old Royal Air Force (RAF) engineer Ronald Maddison was killed by exposure to what is now known as sarin gas.

Like many service men of his era, he was promised small amounts of extra pay or days off to take part in the experiment. For 15 shillings and a three-day leave pass, Maddison volunteered.

Another volunteer, 19-year old Alfred Thornhill, witnessed the RAF engineer's death at the military’s science complex at Porton Down, Wiltshire.

Speaking at a 2004 inquest into Maddison’s death, Thornhill told those present that the 20 year-old collapsed after drops of the toxic chemical were applied to his clothing.

“I had never seen anyone die before and what that lad went through was absolutely horrific. It was like he was being electrocuted, his whole body was convulsing,” he said.

“The skin was vibrating and there was all this terrible stuff coming out of his mouth…it looked like frogspawn. I saw his leg rise up from the bed and I saw his skin begin turning blue. It started from the ankle and started spreading up his leg.”

Thornhill said it was like watching something from “outer space,” as Maddison’s state continued to deteriorate.

Sarin is now classified as a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) by the United Nations (UN).

The inquest into Maddison’s death ruled he had been “unlawfully killed,” and awarded his family £100,000 pounds compensation.

In separate case study, Schmidt found that in 1963 a government scientist had released allegedly “plague like” bacteria onto the London underground. Commuters were never told that the experiment had taken place.

The bacteria was Bacillus Globigii which, although not believed to be harmful at the time, is now known to cause food poisoning, eye infections and occasionally death.

Scientists were trying to discover if aerosols traveled via the transport network or the Underground’s air conditioning system.

In another experiment conducted on a ship in the Outer Hebrides in 1952, a civilian trawler came into the area.

Rather than stopping the vessel and quarantining the crew, scientists decided to let it go onward to see what would happen. It eventually docked for a time in Blackpool, though no contagion was reported.

The book suggests that up to 21,000 service personnel were experimented on over decades of secret testing, with some suffering chemical burns, vomiting and breakdowns.

One victim, Corporal Harry Hogg, then 20 years old, spoke of his experiences in a gas chamber used to test chemical weapons: “It seemed like an eternity. They opened the door and we all piled out on hands and knees, groaning and moaning and crying… one man was just like an animal.”

“He was trying to eat grass. He was out of his mind. What we went through was horrendous,” Hogg added.

In 2008, the government apologized for using servicemen as guinea pigs and awarded compensation to 670 of the victims.

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Inside Britain's secret weapons research facility.

By Dr Michael Mosley
BBC
28 June 2016



As Porton Down marks its 100th anniversary, what really goes on inside Britain's most secretive and controversial military research base?

Porton Down - also known as the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory - is where much of our top-secret military research is concentrated. It has a budget of £500m a year and employs more than 3,000 scientists. It is the most controversial, most misunderstood and, some say, most-feared scientific institution in Britain. Though many will have heard of Porton Down, few will have much idea about what goes on inside.

So I was delighted when I was invited to go behind the fence, make a documentary about the research that goes on there.

Set in more than 7,000 acres of English countryside, Porton Down was created 100 years ago in response to the German gas attacks of World War One. The first of these attacks against British troops involved the use of chlorine. Thousands of soldiers, who had no idea what they were facing, suffered severe chemical burns or died in agony. Chlorine was soon joined by mustard gas and phosgene.

Lord Kitchener, Britain's secretary of state for war, demanded an immediate response. This led to the setting up of Porton Down. Scientists based there swiftly developed gas masks and began testing ways to launch similar gas attacks against the Germans. The result of this tit-for-tat was the death and injury of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians. It is one reason why WW1 is sometimes called "the chemist's war".

Horrified by what had been unleashed, the major world powers signed the Geneva Protocol in 1925, banning use of chemical weapons - but, oddly, not their development

In the 1950s, during the Cold War, Porton Down scientists developed two novel chemical agents, the first of which is still sometimes used against humans. It's called CS gas (after the initials of men who discovered it), but it's better known as tear gas.

Tear gas is non-lethal. It's used for crowd control in other parts of the world, but in the UK the only people who are ever deliberately exposed to it are British troops, as part of their training. I was curious to see what it was like.

So, wearing a respirator I was led into a small airtight room filled with swirling clouds of gas. I took off my mask and tried to talk. The first breath was fine. The next was like inhaling fire. I immediately began to cough and gag and my only thought was to escape. I fled outside, lent against the fence and tried not to throw up.

CS gas is not particularly dangerous, but another chemical agent which was also developed at Porton Down during the 1950s certainly is. It's a nerve agent called Venomous Agent X or VX. Like other nerve agents, such as sarin (first developed by the Germans in the 1930s) even brief exposure rapidly leads to convulsions, paralysis and death.

We were the first television crew to be allowed into one of Porton Down's most secure laboratories, where I watched a chemist carefully make up a bath of VX. The reason chemical agents such as VX and mustard gas are still manufactured on site is to test that equipment issued to troops is proof against attack. And that is because these chemical agents are still being used, particularly in the Middle East.

In March 1988 at least 5,000 Kurds, men, women and children died at Halahbja after being attacked by Saddam Hussein's forces with sarin and mustard gas. More recently there is evidence (collected by Porton Down scientists) that sarin was used against civilians in Syria.

Porton Down's mission is, these days, purely defensive. They are there to develop better ways to protect British troops and civilians against attack. Some of what they are doing feels distinctly sci-fi.



They are, for example, working with Birmingham University on a device that can detect tiny fluctuations in gravity. The hope is that this will, in the future, enable them to see through walls and deep underground.

Other research likely to have a more immediate impact is the use of "synthetic biology" to create body armour which would be more lightweight, flexible but which would still stop bullets. The idea behind synthetic biology is that by studying how animals create protective shells we will be able to grow ceramic body armour from first principles.

One of the most chilling bits of research I saw, however, was their work studying potential biological threats. There is, for example, concern that a terrorist group might decide to attack us using a "dirty bomb" containing something like the ebola virus, which has a mortality rate of up to 90%.

An experiment I watched in a Category IV laboratory (the highest level of security) suggests that ebola does indeed have the potential to be used as a weapon, although fortunately there are currently significant technical and practical barriers to its use.

I am also cheered by the thought that looking forwards and successfully responding to new threats is what the scientists of Porton Down have been doing for the last 100 years.

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A century at Porton Down

1916: A facility at the 3000-acre site is established
1920: Research starts on whole-body protection against mustard gas
1930: Porton Down scientists conduct tests on the London Underground to assess vulnerabilities to chemical or biological attack
1940: Site expands and biological warfare research starts
1946: scientists conduct research into war gases and nerve agents with the help of volunteer military personnel
1989: Nerve agent trials cease
1997: Chemical Weapons Convention comes into force, requiring all members to dispose of chemical weapons and their production facilities
1999: Wiltshire Police begin a four-year investigation into the human experiments at Porton Down nearly 50 years earlier
2008: MoD awards £3m compensation to 360 veterans of the tests without admission of liability
2013: Dstl scientists test samples from Syria for Sarin

Source: Dstl, BBC

[TsarSamuil]

UK & allies used ‘bribery & blackmail’ to force other states to back OPCW proposal – Moscow.

RT.com
28 Jun, 2018 23:55

The UK and its western allies have resorted to downright intimidation and bribery to make other OPCW member states support the idea of giving the chemical watchdog the right to assign guilt, the Russian Foreign Ministry charged.

“London together with other countries … managed to push their scandalous project … by political manipulations as well as by downright bribery and open blackmail, as we have learned,” the Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, told journalists during a briefing on Thursday.

She spoke a day after the UK’s proposal, to give the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) the authority to pin the blame in chemical attack probes, was adopted at the organization’s special session.

The decision was supported by 82 OPCW member states while 24, including Russia, voted against it. Zakharova denounced the move as illegitimate, adding that the member states’ conference actually “moved beyond its own mandate.”

She then drew attention to the fact that the Chemical Weapons Convention, which serves as a legal basis for the existence of the OPCW, does not envisage the creation of any special mechanisms tasked with assigning guilt in case of chemical weapons use.
“Granting such authority to the OPCW Technical Secretariat without amending the convention is impossible by default,” Zakharova said.

She then warned that the actions of the UK and its allies de facto only “deepen the rift” within the OPCW and puts the international chemical weapons non-proliferation and disarmament regime at risk.

Earlier, Russia had warned about a “colossal split in the organization, both in the electoral groups and on the future of OPCW.” Moscow also expressed its concerns over the fact that the changes in the OPCW mandate would turn it into a political tool as well as infringe upon the “exclusive prerogatives of the UN Security Council.”

The changes in the UN chemical watchdog’s mandate come following a long-standing row between Russia and the West over the investigations of alleged chemical incidents in Syria, which were particularly led by OPCW experts. Moscow repeatedly criticized the investigators over mishandling the probes and cherry-picking the evidence while the West, which repeatedly rushed to blame the Syrian government for each and every chemical incident without even waiting for the results of any investigation, accused Russia of blocking the probes.

[TsarSamuil]

Russia’s chemical disarmament confirmed by OPCW, while US has ‘problems’ in the area – Lavrov.

RT.com
12 Aug, 2018 16:54

Russian chemical disarmament has been confirmed by the OPCW, while the US asked to postpone the process till early 2020s, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said commenting on the new round of American sanctions over the Skripal case.

“Three years ago, based on the results of all conceivable inspections we we’ve received confirmation, within the OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) framework, that the process of chemical disarmament by Russia has been completed,” Lavrov told journalists in the Kazakh city of Aktau on Sunday.

“We didn’t close our facilities to the inspectors. They visited everything they wanted to visit and came to the conclusion, which I just mentioned,” he added.

The US had to complete its chemical disarmament “within roughly the same timeframe as us (Russia),” the minister reminded.

“But they again asked for a reschedule – this time now until early 2020s. So, we should rather be speaking about problems with chemical disarmament in the US,” he pointed out.

Earlier this week, the US State Department slapped Moscow with a new round of sanctions after saying that it had “determined” that Russia was responsible for the chemical poisoning of double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the UK in March.

The claim wasn’t backed by any evidence, with the American side promising even more restrictions in three months if Russia doesn’t provide guarantees that it won’t change its ways regarding the chemical weapons use and prevent international inspectors from visit production facilities in the country.

According to reports, the first package of sanctions, scheduled to come into effect on or around August 22, will include a ban on exports of sensitive national security goods to Russia. The second – harsher – round of sanctions is said to include downgrading diplomatic relations, banning the Russian airline Aeroflot from flying to the US and cutting off nearly all exports and imports.

Lavrov reiterated that Russia rejected the American accusations, saying that “anybody, who is at least slightly familiar with the so-called ‘Skripal case’, understands the absurdity of the statement [on Moscow being guilty] contained in the State Department’s official paper,” he said.

The UK has been claiming that the Skripals were poisoned by a Soviet-designed toxin called ‘Novichok’ and, based on this, blamed Russia for the attack. However, more than four months after the incident London has been unable to produce any convincing proof of Moscow’s involvement in the poisoning.

[TsarSamuil]

Deadly experiments: Georgian ex-minister claims US-funded facility may be bioweapons lab.

RT.com
16 Sep, 2018 01:34

Shrouded in mystery, a US-funded medical facility in Georgia could be a cover for a bioweapons lab used for disturbing experiments that banned in the US, a Georgian ex-security minister has claimed. Tbilisi denies the accusations.

The center, which is officially called the R. Lugar Center for Public Health Research, is described as a “brand new facility” tasked with the “prevention of proliferation of technology, pathogens and expertise related to the development of biological weapons” by the National Center for Disease Control and Public Health (NCDC), an agency of Georgia’s Health Ministry. The task is said to be part of a cooperation program between Georgia and the US.

However, Igor Giorgadze, a former state security minister-turned opposition figure, says he recently obtained a trove of leaked documents which might expose some dark secrets at the facility.

The lab, which was “established on the territory of a … former military base some 17 kilometers from Tbilisi” as part of a US-funded project back in 2004, “was never meant to be a medical center and had nothing in common with a hospital,” Giorgadze told RT. It was notably overseen by the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), a combat support agency of Pentagon which deals with weapons of mass destruction.

Giorgadze points out that the facility has been the subject of rumors, and seemingly linked to mysterious incidents from the very beginning. Located in a Georgian village, it opened in 2011.

“The people who lived there complained about frequent headaches, sickness and a strange smell” which they said emanated from the lab, the ex-minister said. The beginning of work at the laboratory strangely coincided with an increase in the incidences of some diseases on Georgian territory, he added.

The leaks include documents related to several US grants for research on Crimean–Congo Hemorrhagic Fever, and other disease causative agents. Coincidence or not, the NCDC data shows that the first recorded outbreaks of Crimean–Congo Hemorrhagic Fever in Georgia took place in 2009-2012, while a deadly strain of Orthopoxvirus was first recorded in 2013.

Giorgadze says the leaked docs might shed light on some shady and harrowing practices at the lab. Some of them allegedly involve experiments on people that sometimes ended with the deaths of test subjects, while other files imply some military-related research and the development of biological weapons.

‘Drones filled with toxic mosquitoes’

The data obtained by the former security minister amounts to 100,000 pages, according to his assessment. Giorgadze has even created a special website, where he said he would gradually publish all the documents to make them publicly available. But the 1 percent of the materials published so far already gives an insight into the allegedly malign activities at the lab.

One example is a United States Patent for the development of a remotely controlled “device for the aerial release of mosquitoes” aimed at spreading a “toxin suitable to be transmitted by mosquito bite.” “The present invention is capable of delivering lethal and non-lethal toxins, including any agent that can be carried and transmitted by a mosquito,” the description of the patent says.

Another no less unnerving US patent found among the leaked documents describes a “capsule” that looks like a “cartridge for a firearm”, which is “designed to release a toxic agent when struck by the firing pin of the firearm.” The device is apparently aimed at targeting the troops of a potential enemy. Another document contains a description of “hollow point payload capsules” that could potentially be filled with chemical or biological weapons.

The documents “openly state that such devices are designed for conducting sabotage operations,” Giorgadze told RT. The facility “might be potentially conducting some experiments that are banned on US territory,” the ex-minister believes. He adds, however, that he still does not have enough data to make any conclusive statements on that subject.

It is still unclear what exact role the Lugar Center played in the development of such weaponry, Giorgadze said, calling for an expert assessment of the leaked documents.

27 human lab rats dead ‘in one day’

A separate batch of documents published by Giorgazde shows some highly controversial results in the treatment of people diagnosed with Hepatitis C with medicines developed in the US. The papers show that almost three dozen patients died, with their deaths attributed to “unknown reasons”, or simply not explained.

All patients who suffered from various adverse effects or died were treated with Sovaldi – a US drug once hailed as a revolution in the treatment of Hepatitis C. What looks even more sinister is the fact that 27 patients died on the same day.

"What happened to them? Were they infected with something? Where were they buried? We need answers,” Giorgadze said, noting the chilling incident might be just the tip of the iceberg. The documents contain almost none of the patients’ personal information, except for their age and gender in some cases.

RT could not independently verify the authenticity of the documents presented by Giorgadze.

The former minister and veteran intelligence officer, who does not rule out that the documents might be a very elaborate fake, now wants a group of experts to carry out an independent investigation. He has said he will ask the US President, Donald Trump, and the US Congress to launch an investigation into the lab’s activities.

Meanwhile, they have already drawn the attention of the Russian Defense Ministry, which has said it will conduct its own investigation. “The documents suggest possible violations of the [Biological Weapons Convention] by the US side, which ratified it in 1972,” the Russian ministry said in a statement.

Georgia has flat-out rejected the alleged leak. “No … secret experiments have been conducted in this center,” a Georgian government official, Zurab Abashidze, told journalists, saying that the work of the laboratory is “absolutely transparent”. He dismissed the alleged experiments on people as “absurd.” He also said that the facility is the property of the Georgian government and its work is financed by the Georgian authorities.

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US in Violation of Bioweapons Convention? BOMBSHELL LEAKS of Secret US Laboratories/Experiments.

Vesti News
Sep 17, 2018



Igor Giorgadze, the former State Security Minister of Georgia, dropped a bombshell last Tuesday when he leaked documents containing information on a laboratory located near Tbilisi named after US Senator Richard Lugar. The lab may have secretly conducted experiments on people, some of which had lethal outcomes.

[TsarSamuil]

Dozens of Georgians likely killed by US toxin or bioweapon disguised as drug research – Russian MoD.

RT.com
4 Oct, 2018 12:13

A US-funded biomedical laboratory in Georgia may have conducted bioweapons research under the guise of a drug test, which claimed the lives of at least 73 subjects, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.

The question of what really might have taken place at the secretive US-sponsored research facility hosted by Russia’s southern neighbor was raised by the Russian military on Thursday after they studied files published online by a former Georgian minister.

The documents record the deaths of 73 people over a short period of time, indicating a test of “a highly toxic chemical or biological agents with high lethality rate,” said Igor Kirillov, commander of the Russian military branch responsible for defending troops from radiological, chemical and biological weapons.


The Richard Lugar Center for Public Health Research near Tbilisi, Georgia © stringer / Sputnik

Kirillov apparently doubted that the tests, carried out by the Richard Lugar Center for Public Health Research near the Georgian capital Tbilisi, involved clinical trials of a drug called Sovaldi, which is meant for the treatment of Hepatitis C. The producer of the drug is Gilead Sciences, a California-based biomedical firm that recruited former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld as a board member in 1988, in between his two tenures as head of the Pentagon.

“The documents showed many lethal outcomes among the patients. Despite the deaths of 24 people in December 2015 alone, the clinical trials were continued in violation of international standards and the wishes of the patients,” Kirillov claimed. “This led to the deaths of 49 more people.”

The large number of deaths stands in stark contrast to the actual documented use of Sovaldi in Russia, where no deaths have been linked to the drug, the Russian official stressed. Kirillov added that the US has a long record of unethical testing on human subjects in foreign countries.


A slide showing the spread of disease-carrying mosquitoes from the Georgian territory into southern Russia, which the MoD says could be re-examined in light of the revelations.

The Russian official said the new documents “allow us to take a fresh look” at outbreaks of African swine fever in southern Russia in 2007-2018, which “spread from the territory of Georgia into the Russian Federation, European nations and China. The infection strain in the samples collected from animals killed by the disease in those nations was identical to the Georgia-2007 strain.”

The general said the Lugar Center in Georgia is simply part of a large network of Pentagon-controlled laboratories involved in WMD research, which was established in countries neighboring Russia. Part of the research is meant to establish infections that would be particularly resistant to vaccination and treatment, and effectively spread in the environment of the places in which the labs are located, he said.

Russia will take “diplomatic and military action” in response to a perceived threat from US labs, said Vladimir Shamanov, head of Russian parliament’s Defense Committee. He was commenting on accusations by the Defense Ministry. “We cannot simply turn a blind eye to things happening near our southern borders that directly affect our safety,” he told TASS news agency.

Responding to the allegations, Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon told RIA Novosti that the US did not conduct bioweapons research in Georgia and called the Russian ministry’s statements part of “a Russian disinformation campaign directed against the West.”

The documents relating to the secret lab were published last month by former Georgian minister for state security Igor Giorgadze, who says he obtained 100,000 pages of data pointing to questionable US practices.

[TsarSamuil]

Dilyana Gaytandzhieva: US biological weapons - defense or attack?

News Front in English
Feb 15, 2018



The Bulgarian journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva conducted investigation into the secret laboratories of the United States. What, in fact, are people in white robes doing under the cover of super-secrecy?

Secret US laboratories - what is their essence? What are the Americans preparing for, defense or attack? Find out in exclusive interview with Dilyana Gaytandzhieva. Anchorwoman Catherine Nollan.

[TsarSamuil]

Defensive bioweapon? DARPA wants insects to spread genetically modified viruses… to ‘save crops’

RT.com
5 Oct, 2018 00:47

A US military program dubbed ‘Insect Allies’ could be used as a biological weapon, a group of European scientists warns. The Pentagon’s research arm claims they are intended to defend crops, but doesn’t deny ‘dual-use’ potential.

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology and the University of Freiburg in Germany, as well as the University of Montpellier, France, have published a critique of the program, dubbed “Insect Allies,” in the October 5 edition of Science.

They argue that “the knowledge to be gained from this program appears very limited in its capacity to enhance US agriculture or respond to national emergencies” and therefore the program “may be widely perceived as an effort to develop biological agents for hostile purposes and their means of delivery,” which would mean a breach of the Biological Weapons Convention.

Speaking to Gizmodo on Thursday, Dr. Blake Bextine, program manager of Insect Allies, said that DARPA was “not producing biological weapons, and we reject the hypothetical scenario,” though they “accept and agree with concerns about potential dual use of technology.”

However, Bextine’s two-page response, released by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency later in the day, did not contain the forceful denial of bioweapons charges. Instead, Bextine argued the program was intended to “respond rapidly to threats to the food supply” and that it was subject to government regulation and transparency rules.

Nothing could possibly go wrong, Bextine firmly emphasized, simply because “every performer in the program is required to include at least three independent kill switches in their systems to shut down functionality of the technology.”

DARPA’s insect allies would work by injecting the affected crops with gene-editing viruses intended to target whatever ailment affects them, using CRISPR technology. The researchers point out this mechanism could also be used to introduce viruses into healthy organisms, however.

The question is not whether the program can be weaponized; it already has been. DARPA has been one of the major sources of funding for a project to release genetically modified mosquitoes into the wild, armed with a gene-editing virus intended to sterilize the species that transmits malaria. There have been plans to release these GMO mosquitoes in the Florida Keys.

The dispute over Insect Allies comes as Russia has raised concerns about a US biological research facility in Tbilisi, Georgia. A former government minister has recently published online some 100,000 pages of documents about the facility.

The Russian military is now looking into the outbreaks of African swine fever since 2007 that originated in Georgia and spread into Russia, Europe and China.

“The infection strain in the samples collected from animals killed by the disease in those nations was identical to the Georgia-2007 strain,” Igor Kirillov, commander of the Russian military branch responsible for defending troops from radiological, chemical and biological weapons, said on Thursday.

The Pentagon, however, rejected Moscow’s concerns as part of “a Russian disinformation campaign directed against the West.”

For some obscure reason, a US Air Force contract in July 2017 sought samples of ribonucleic acid (RNA) and synovial fluid from Russian subjects who “must be Caucasian.” It also sought information on the donor’s sex, age, ethnicity, weight, height and medical history, and specifically disqualified tissue samples from Ukraine.

In October that year, Russian President Vladimir Putin told the country’s Human Rights Council that someone was collecting “biological material” from various ethnic groups and regions of the Russian Federation, wondering at the purpose behind this.

Despite worrisome scientific breakthroughs and controversial research programs, so far the notion of a genetically tailored virus being used as a bioweapon has been confined to science fiction. A story published in 2015, titled “Seven Kill Tiger,” posited the nightmare scenario of China using such a weapon to wipe out much of Africa.

[TsarSamuil]

‘Western brand’: more than 20 nations possess over 140 ‘Novichok’-type substances, Russian Foreign Ministry says.

RT.com
10 Oct, 2020 22:13

The notorious ‘Novichok’ nerve agent described as Russia’s lethal weapon has been first presented to the world by Americans and has since been replicated by 20 of their allies, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

The structure of a substance that has since been known to the world as ‘Novichok’ has been first unveiled by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology back in 1998 on the basis of the data provided by the Pentagon, the Russian Ministry said on Saturday, replying to yet another damning statement by the German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas.

Over the years, the formula was used by Americans and more than 20 other western nations to produce a cluster of as many as 140 variations of the toxin that can be attributed to the ‘Novichok’ group, the ministry said, adding that the whole lot of them are not covered by the Chemical Weapons Convention.

“‘Novichok’ is a western brand,” the ministry’s statement said. “We do not have it.”

Moscow reminded that all the chemical weapons in its possession were destroyed back in 2017 under “rigorous international control” overseen by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

The statement came in response to a speech Maas delivered in the German parliament earlier this week. The German minister once again accused Russia of failing to provide clear answers on the case of Alexey Navalny, a Russian opposition figure supposedly poisoned by the notorious nerve agent and subsequently treated in a Berlin clinic. Maas also threatened Moscow with sanctions over the incident.

Russia, in turn, argued that it cannot launch a probe into the case without any evidence that the alleged poisoning did take place. The ministry reminded that neither Russian doctors, who saved Navalny's life in the first crucial hours, nor German doctors, who treated him further, found any traces of a nerve agent poisoning. Those were only allegedly found almost a week later by the German military, Moscow added.

Still, Berlin has not so far provided any material evidence substantiating the poisoning narrative to Russia.

Maas stated earlier that traces of ‘Novichok’ were found in Navalny’s blood in urine by a German military lab as well as by facilities in France and Sweden. Yet, none of these findings were ever shared with Moscow despite at least four formal cooperation requests the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office filed with the German authorities. Berlin is also reluctant to share any other information related to this case with Moscow as well, the ministry noted.

“The German side has something to explain despite its tenacious unwillingness to do so. Its earlier excuses are unacceptable. They are unconvincing,” the ministry said.
“The only thing we want is to get legal, technical and organizational assistance within the bilateral German-Russian [framework] as well as with the OPCW frameworks to conduct a comprehensive and unbiased investigation of Navalny’s case.”

Yet, instead of cooperation, Russia faces “aggressive rhetoric” and a “propagandist attack” orchestrated from Germany, the ministry noted.

The alleged poisoning of a Russian blogger turned Kremlin critic has lately soured relations between Russia and Germany.

Navalny was in coma between August 20 and September 7 after falling ill on a flight from Siberia to Moscow. He was first hospitalized in the Russian city of Omsk, where the medics managed to stabilize him but did not find any traces of any particular poison in his body. Later, he was transferred to the Berlin's Charité clinic on family's request.

The German authorities then claimed he was targeted in a poisoning attack and demanded Moscow provide some “answers” to this case, threatening Moscow with a swift response in the form of sanctions. Germany’s western allies, including the UK, France and the US also rushed to link the incident to Russia while Navalny himself was quick to blame Kremlin for the ordeal, without providing any evidence.

Lately, the OPCW confirmed its specialists found some substances in Navalny’s blood and urine that have “structural characteristics” similar to those of the ‘Novichok’ group. Moscow now expects to receive some information on the case from the international chemical weapons watchdog.