MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 05th October, 2018) The Russian Defense Ministry on Thursday accused the United States of stocking up on biological weapons by using a network of labs in former Soviet countries to research pathogens.
The revelation was made to reporters in Moscow by Maj. Gen. Igor Kirillov, commander of Russia's radiological, chemical and biological defense troops, who presented a dossier by Igor Giorgadze, a former minister of state security in the country of Georgia.
Kirillov said the Pentagon was running a secret biological weapons lab at the Lugar Center for Public Health and Research in Tbilisi, Georgia. A network of clandestine military labs, he said, spanned Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan, threatening Russia and China.
Georgia and the United States denied his claim, in comments to Sputnik. Georgia's government envoy for ties with Russia Zurab Abashidze called the allegation absurd, while Defense Department spokesman Eric Pahon said the center was owned and operated by Georgia's disease control center.
The United States has repeatedly denied researching biological weapons at the Tbilisi center, but the general said the Georgian dossier proved the Pentagon flouted multiple international accords, spending over $160 million on the construction of the Lugar Center.
"The documents submitted by Igor Giorgadze refute US statements and confirm concerns about the illegal activities of the United States in Georgia, including attempts to circumvent a number of provisions of the Convention on the Prohibition of Biological and Toxin Weapons," he said.
Images of the center on Google Maps show significant upgrades made throughout the years. A new eight-floor building sprang up next to the facility earlier this year. He said two floors were occupied by the US Armed Forces, with enclosed areas for patients infected with high risk pathogens.
Kirillov said Georgian staffers at the center had only limited access to documents and facilities, while US military biologists enjoyed diplomatic immunity under a 2002 US-Georgian agreement on cooperation.
"American military biologists, working in the Center are protected by diplomatic immunity ... The diplomatic immunity allows the US armed forces' officials to carry out tasks assigned by their government bypassing Georgian laws," he said.
The Pentagon not only runs the facility but pays all its expenses "down to the last Dollar," including utility bills and security services, the Russian official added.
He pointed to the Georgian Health Ministry's contacts with Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the US Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Safety.
"The documents show that the list of priority US studies includes potential agents of biological weapons - agents causing tularemia, anthrax, brucellosis, dengue fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever and other diseases transmitted by bloodsucking insects," he said.
Kirillov said the revelation lent a new perspective to biological threats south of the Russian border. He said a study showed that in 2007-2018 African swine fever spread from Georgia to Russia, China and Europe. The range of insect-transmitted diseases also widened.
"In the region around the Lugar Center the situation with infections transmitted by insects is growing particularly bad," Kirillov said, citing data collected by the EU's center for disease prevention and control.
The Russian general said this "atypical spread" of disease carriers may have links to what Igor Giorgadze observed was the United States developing methods to deliver and use biological weapons.
The former Georgian security chief referred to a US-issued patent, No 967029, for a drone that could spread pathogen-carrying insects, which, Kirillov argued, "does not correspond to Washington's international commitments on the prohibition of biological and toxic weapons."
Other patents showed that US researchers were working on munitions that could be filled with poisonous, radioactive, or narcotic substances, and pathogens. These were characterized by low cost and absence of contact with enemy forces.
"Such munitions are not listed among conventional or humane weapons, while any publishing of such data runs against international accords on nonproliferation of biological weapons," Kirillov emphasized, adding this was "in line with the US concept of contactless warfare."
Kirillov accused the Pentagon of having tested a lethal substance on unsuspecting Georgian volunteers, leading to 73 deaths since 2015. He said a high mortality rate among those who used the antiviral Sovaldi medicine in comparison with that in Russia pointed to its "highly toxic" nature.
"The tests ended in mass deaths among patients. At the same time, despite the death of 24 people in December 2015 alone, clinical studies were continued in violation of international standards and contrary to the wishes of patients. This led to the deaths of another 49 people," Kirillov said.
The drug produced by Gilead Sciences is used to treat hepatitis C, a serious viral infection that damages liver. Kirillov said the California-based pharma company had former Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld as its shareholder.
The United States has been running a global network of more than 30 labs marked as having high biological safety levels, Kirillov said, citing public UN data.
"The United States is consistently increasing its biological potential and control of national collections of pathogenic microorganisms not only in former Soviet republics," Kirillov said, calling the labs a "persistent biological threat" to Russia and China.
The general said these labs expropriated collections of local pathogens, including those resistant to vaccines and antibiotics. These studies, he estimated, have received up to $1 billion in US funding since 2017, with a budget of $197 million earmarked for 2019.
