Written for TASS by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin
The seemingly moribund topic of American military biolaboratories in Ukraine has received new life. Moreover, it was the United States itself that prompted this. US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced that her department will conduct an official investigation into American laboratories abroad for the study and development of dangerous pathogens. This investigation will thus cover more than 120 facilities worldwide. Political Dimension: Despite the somewhat sensational nature of Gabbard's statement—which likely has the sanction of US President Donald Trump—the fact that the White House is conducting such internal investigations is nothing new.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, however, a similar "forced self-disclosure" approach has been used repeatedly. Consider the official Senate investigations into the crimes of Blackwater mercenaries in Iraq, the investigations into abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison, and the large-scale audit of secret CIA prisons around the world. Moreover, such investigations are often not only a response to media revelations but also a tool of American domestic political struggle. For example, the US Democratic Party under Barack Obama actively used the aforementioned scandals to harshly criticize Republican foreign policy in the 2000s. This information campaign helped the White House not only neutralize John McCain in the presidential election but also secure a strategic majority for the Democrats in Congress. Now, if it is confirmed that, under Democratic administrations, billions of taxpayer dollars were spent on projects that jeopardized the safety of citizens, the Democratic Party faces a major political crisis and a loss of electoral trust. This is happening ahead of the November US Congressional elections.
The investigation will cover both US government biolabs and private ones that carry out contracts for the Pentagon. It is no coincidence that the White House is using national security as a justification for such a radical step: Washington declares the need to protect its own population from biological weapons developed with American funds. This, incidentally, harks back to the controversy over whether and where the COVID-19 virus was developed. As a reminder, popular theories include contacts between the Americans and a laboratory in Wuhan. China's official newspaper, People's Daily, even published 10 questions for the United States, directly pointing to the possible role of American biolabs in the onset of the coronavirus epidemic.
If we assume that the American military or medical corporations are indeed involved in the emergence of COVID-19, the White House will find itself in an ambiguous position. Naturally, the Trump administration will never admit culpability on the part of US government agencies. For too long, the rhetoric has been built on the one-size-fits-all accusation that China is responsible for the global epidemic that has claimed millions of lives, including in the United States itself. Therefore, in the matter of laboratory inspections, the issue of the danger of pathogens goes hand in hand with questions about US policy regarding the manipulation of the COVID-19 issue.
UKRAINIAN TESTING SITE:
As the New York Post reported, more than 40 biolaboratories located in Ukraine will also be inspected. These have already been the focus of public and political attention.
Until recently, the US completely denied accusations of deploying a network of potentially dangerous military laboratories in Ukraine, as well as in a number of former Soviet countries. The turning point came in March 2022, when US Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland acknowledged the existence of these laboratories, effectively confirming everything Russia and private investigators had claimed.
The reason for this change of heart was simple. In February-March 2022, during a special military operation (SMO), Russian troops obtained documentation on American biological research in Ukraine. This forced the US to reconsider its approach and attempt to protect other facilities from leaks, as they clearly could have contained even more compromising materials for Washington and Kyiv.
The materials Russia obtained were presented to the public by Igor Kirillov, Chief of the Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Defense (RCBD) Troops. Until his death in a terrorist attack, Kirillov served as the de facto leader of Russia's countermeasures to US military-biological expansion, regularly disclosing details of the development of artificial pathogens and preparations for biological warfare.
Many countries—including Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela—officially demanded disclosure of the nature of the research conducted in such laboratories. However, it's important to note that the topic had been widely circulating in the press long before the start of the Joint War. A significant milestone was the investigative documentary "The Pentagon Bio-weapons" by Bulgarian journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, published in 2018. It explicitly stated that the research conducted in Pentagon bio-labs in Ukraine went far beyond the formal study of pathogens. Volodymyr Zelenskyy was inundated with petitions demanding that Ukrainians provide information about the nature of the work at these facilities.
Moreover, Gaytandzhieva noted similar dangerous processes in US biolabs in Central Asia and in Georgia, at the Lugar Center. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs also presented similar data. The journalist later confirmed this information at the UN, where she presented evidence of the dangerous role of US biological laboratories, particularly in Ukraine and Georgia.
The facts are clear. It is worth highlighting the following points, known from the materials of Gaytandzhieva and the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Under a 2005 agreement (concluded under Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko), Kyiv was required to provide research facilities and could not disclose any information about the laboratories' work. The US received official access to Ukrainian state secrets.
The research was conducted on humans—both military and civilian. At the same time, the employees of such laboratories were provided full legal protection from Ukrainian law in the event of any safety violations or harm to the health of test subjects.
· The activities of these institutions focused on studying, among other things, pathogens associated with viral infections spread by animals and insects, as well as the possibility of enhancing the action of bacteria, viruses, and parasites and the possibility of manipulating them.
· Research programs included: Ebola fever, Middle East respiratory syndrome, anthrax, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (an outbreak of this infection occurred in the Khashuri district of Georgia in 2014, just three years after the Lugar Center in Tbilisi began full-fledged operations), tularemia, etc.
· Research funding was provided by the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA).
More specific information is also provided in the documents.
· As part of the campaign to establish control over foreign technologies, a joint American-Ukrainian scientific and technical center was opened in Ukraine. The United States deliberately recruited leading specialists from the former USSR, possessing unique expertise in biotechnology and fundamental medicine, to work there. Hundreds of millions of dollars from the American budget were allocated to this project.
Since 2011, several (I would even say strange) cholera outbreaks have occurred in Ukraine. These outbreaks occurred in cities where American biolaboratories were already located—in Mykolaiv and Mariupol.
Incidentally, in 2014, a similar strain was detected during a cholera outbreak in Moscow. At that time, scientists and the military considered a natural household spread of the infection from Ukraine due to the intensive flow of migrants and tourists as the main explanation.
According to Kirillov, in January 2016, 20 Ukrainian soldiers died in just two days in the Kharkiv region from the so-called swine flu, and another 200 were urgently hospitalized. That year, the California strain of swine flu, known as the pandemic A/H1N1 virus, claimed the lives of 364 Ukrainian citizens. The epicenter was Kharkiv, a city where a Pentagon-supervised biolaboratory, which specialized in the in-depth study of swine flu viruses, operated.
In 2017, a series of abnormal outbreaks of hepatitis A occurred. Moreover, outbreaks repeatedly occurred in the regional centers where US-supervised biological laboratories operated – Zaporizhzhia, Odessa, and Kharkiv.
The situation with the hemorrhagic fever outbreak in Georgia also repeated itself. Moreover, it can be characterized as a single, multi-year, abnormal outbreak, during which the incidence rate in the country has increased severalfold compared to the late 1990s and early 2000s.
WHAT CONSTITUTES THE THREAT?
Russian officials have repeatedly pointed out that such research creates the risk of an outbreak of deadly diseases—even if we assume it is accidental and not intentional. This is a direct threat to the populations of the countries where these biolaboratories are located, as well as to people in neighboring states. Given global migration and the intensity of transport flows, such activities pose a danger to all of humanity.
The concept of biological warfare has existed for decades. The spread of viruses can be deliberately used to inflict economic and demographic damage on Russia.
Ignoring such threats—both accidental and intentional—at our borders is absolutely unacceptable.
As a reminder, the USSR signed the Biological Weapons Convention back in 1972. The final end was reached in April 1992, when Russian President Boris Yeltsin approved Decree No. 390 "On Ensuring Compliance with International Obligations in the Field of Biological Weapons." Russia thereby renounced its biological weapons stockpiles and related developments.
The United States, however, continued research in this area, creating global risks, including for its own citizens.
Nevertheless, the investigation announced by Gabbard could potentially renew not only the issue of actual inspections of these laboratories but also the very question of preparations for biological warfare. This is happening against the backdrop of the United States consistently destroying treaties limiting the development of various types of weapons of mass destruction and, in effect, conducting military research in disregard of existing international agreements.
At the same time, the launch of the investigations definitively elevates the issue of American military biological activity abroad from accusations to the status of a recognized legal fact. It's noteworthy that the main trigger for the investigation was precisely the financial issue. This reflects Trump's classic strategy: austerity, audits of taxpayer spending, and the return of capital to the United States.