U.S. biolaboratories in Ukraine: Deadly viruses and threat for population
ウクライナの米国バイオラボラトリーズ：致命的なウイルスと人口への脅威
19:48, 23 September 2020
America has allocated more than $ 2 billion to finance secret biological laboratories in Ukraine. And only the Americans have the exclusive right of access to the experiments carried out there … The Ukrainian authorities stubbornly hide even the existence of these laboratories. And people panic because of outbreaks of unknown diseases … So how protected are these premises from the leakage of dangerous viruses?
Author : 112.ua News Agency
Biological weapons
Open source
Tetyana, 49 visited all possible doctors. She underwent tests, ultrasound, gastroscopy. But the woman did not understand what exactly she was sick with. She does not want to attract too much attention from the special services, so she agreed to the interview only on the condition that we did not show her face.
“The state of health sharply worsened, I suddenly began to vomit, then the fever for three days, then there is no fever for these three days. It’s all somehow strange,” says Tetiana.
At first, the symptoms were similar to poisoning, there was a severe cough and burning sensation in the chest, and then also a strange rash on the hands. In the end, she could not get out of bed from weakness.
“I started going to the doctors. But they really can’t find anything. This, they say, is some kind of psychosomatics,” she says.
And, as Tetyana later discovered, almost all her neighbors had such psychosomatics. Strange coincidence, isn’t it?
“My sister came and invited me to Kyiv. Although I felt bad, I thought I’ll go and suddenly began to feel better. I just moved away from home, I immediately felt better. For some reason, I suspected that something was not right here, perhaps someone is doing some kind of research, “the heroine reflects.
Today Tetyana is almost sure that the cause of her incomprehensible illness is some kind of virus leak from the biological laboratory, near which she then lived. And she didn’t even know about it.
Oddly enough, for the first time talks about American laboratories in Ukraine started abroad. Three years ago, the Serbian newspaper Pechat published an article “Why is the US turning Ukraine into a biological bomb?”
It says about the laboratories built in Ukraine in 2014-17. It seems that only Americans work there, and the Pentagon finances them.
This information was picked up by Russian and Bulgarian media. The latter conducted their own investigation in 2018. And they counted 11 secret laboratories in Ukraine through which dangerous diseases spread.
In Ukraine, the existence of American laboratories was the first to be raised by MPs Viktor Medvedchuk and Renat Kuzmin. They even sent an appeal to the SBU about the commission of a criminal offense.
The official document indicates that US military doctors are studying the use of pathogens of especially dangerous infections in different regions of Ukraine. This is confirmed by outbreaks of dangerous infectious diseases.
In 2009, 450 Ukrainians became victims of hemorrhagic pneumonia in Ternopil. Hemorrhagic or viral-bacterial pneumonia is an acute infectious disease. It can lead to death.
In 2011, 33 Ukrainians suffered from cholera, in 2014 – already 800, and in 2015 in Mykolayiv alone – another 100. Cholera is an acute diarrheal infection. It occurs when eating food or water contaminated with the bacteria Vibrio cholerae O1 or O139. It can lead to death.
“And if all this is mapped, then we understand that in fact, where these laboratories are located, these outbreaks are mainly taking place,” says political expert Olexander Lazarev.
In addition to the SBU, MPs also appealed to President Zelensky, Prime Minister Denis Shmygal and Minister of Health Maxym Stepanov with a demand to make public information about the existence of American laboratories in Ukraine.
“Given the growing incidence of serious infectious diseases among the population, there is every reason to believe that the secret and opaque activity of dangerous foreign biological objects on the territory of Ukraine is aimed at covert testing of the action of viruses and bacteria on the citizens of Ukraine,” the appeal says.
“If this is not true, then the government should refute it. And if it’s true, then explain to people how much the Ukrainian government controls their activities and how safe it is for our lives,” Mykola Skoryk says.
The President ignored the appeal. Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) objected all.
“Firstly, there are no foreign biological laboratories operating on the territory of Ukraine. The statements that have recently been heard from certain politicians do not correspond to reality and are a deliberate distortion of facts,” the message says.
“This speaks only of one thing – that the Security Service of Ukraine is not engaged in its direct responsibilities. That is, it is actually engaged in ‘protection’, pressure on the opposition, looking for the arms and legs of the Kremlin, but do not see these frankly illustrative examples of security violations. – this is their specificity,” Oleksander Lazarev comments.
But while the SBU denied the existence of American laboratories in Ukraine, the American embassy played ahead of the curve. The presence of laboratories has been officially confirmed, as well as that they are funded by the Pentagon.
“The US Department of Defense’s Biological Threat Program is working in Ukraine with the Ukrainian government to ensure consolidated and secure storage of pathogens and threatening toxins,” the embassy said.
“The response of the US Embassy was rather inadequate, but they posted this answer, later they corrected it several times, in particular the page on which the experiments were discussed, information about the reaction of people with these diseases. First, this paragraph was corrected on the embassy website, plus then this page disappeared and there was a big difference between the page in English and Russian, ” political expert Mykhailo Chaplyga says.
So who to believe while the president is silent: the U.S. embassy or the SBU?
They operate in accordance with the 2005 agreement between the Ministry of Health and the US Department of Defense on the reduction of biological threats. US Senators Barack Obama and Richard Lugar came to the signing. We even went on an excursion to the Kyiv Sanitary and Epidemiological Station.
According to clause 5 of the agreement, the Ministry of Health of Ukraine collects and stores dangerous strains in laboratories funded by the United States. Reports directly to the US Department of Defense, and transfers copies of dangerous strains there for further research.
Further on the secrecy. According to Art. 7. p 2. of the agreement in Ukraine it is prohibited to disclose information that the Pentagon has identified as “sensitive” …
In return, the Pentagon gets access to information that is a state secret of Ukraine (clause 4 of article 7. of this agreement).
This agreement arose not from scratch, but on the basis of a framework agreement between Ukraine and the United States in 1993, when America helped Ukraine to eliminate strategic nuclear weapons and proliferate weapons of mass destruction. Its term expires only in December 2020.
Until then, representatives of the Pentagon have the right to check the work of laboratories, as well as to participate in activities at facilities in Ukraine.
Related: Pompeo convinced coronavirus began to spread from Wuhan laboratory
How Americans cooperate with Ukrainian scientists is one question. Another one is why would they invest more than $ 2 billion in biological laboratories?
We managed to arrange an interview with a former FBI special agent. And here’s the American point of view.
“I understand why Ukrainians are afraid when it comes to biolaboratory. I think the program has two goals – to help improve the safety of laboratories and, possibly, to collect intelligence information about what is happening in those laboratories so that we are aware of .. “These new technologies are creating opportunities that were not available before in the development of bioweapons,” former FBI special agent Tracy Walder says.
“The story originates in the Soviet Union, but we understand that old Soviet laboratories were scattered across the territory of the Russian Federation. Everyone knows about the nuclear weapons that we handed over, but the real weapons in the modern world are still biological ones,” Chaplyga says.
And 6 years after the signing, a tragedy occurred at one of the biological laboratories in the town of Sverdlovsk in Siberia.
“A kind of microbiological Chernobyl to an ordinary residential area where anthrax was produced. And so that you know, Siberian plague was produced on a large scale: there were such tanks as in elevators, these were all anthrax spores. It was just an industrial scale. When one of the pipes spreaded these disputes, because they forgot to change the filter, about a hundred people died. In fact, the work continued until 1992, until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Under Yeltsin, it was closed,” says Yevgen Dikiy.
“In fact, now we are talking about biological weapons, which are being developed on the territory of Ukraine, which we do not know about and which is not under the control of Ukraine,” Chaplyga added.
So what do we have. There are 14 laboratories on the map. We wrote requests to the President’s Office, to the Security Service of Ukraine, to the Ministry of Health, to the Public Health Center of Ukraine … Even to Barack Obama. The questions are simple. How many laboratories? What viruses do they work with? And how safe is it for Ukrainians?
“This is not as bad as you think. The US wants your laboratories to be protected from what we are now seeing in China with the example of a virus leak from a laboratory in Wuhan. I personally do not believe that you are doing experiments on humans. But those on animals it is a common practice,” Walder explains.
What experiments are being carried out and what deadly viruses are being tested in Ukraine?
To find out, we went to find the lab data.
Capital. Everything is simple here. The existence of the American laboratory is confirmed by America itself.
“Two laboratories have been built for the State Service of Ukraine for Food Safety and Consumer Protection: one in Kyiv, one in Odesa,” the American authorities said.
The construction of secret US biological laboratories in Ukraine is carried out through a contractor – Black & Individ.
“In fact, this is a company that implements the tasks set within the framework of international technical assistance projects, and they are financed by the US government,” explains Olga Shevchenko, acting head of the State Food and Consumer Service.
Black & Individ, in turn, signed a $ 970 million agreement with the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency of the US Department of Defense.
This laboratory is located in a residential area of the capital. Right in the middle of residential buildings.
Apparently, some kind of serious protection and access levels are supposed … I wonder if the locals know that they have a Pentagon-funded facility under their noses?
The journalists found out that the Institute of Microbiology and Strains is located in the capital. And what it is engaged in, the director cannot explain: “This is a veterinary institute. Well, veterinary and bacteriological.”
“Only employees of our research institute will work in this building; in fact, their profile does not change,” explains Andriy Mezhensky, director of the State Research Institute for Laboratory Diagnostics and Veterinary and Sanitary Expertise.
But without camera he added: “The Americans do not want us to be engaged in isolation and work with the pathogen in general, they want us as much as possible work on screening methods. They do not trust these post-Soviet countries.”
That is, the main work will be done by the Ukrainians, and the results will be analyzed by the Americans themselves.
30 km from Kharkiv. 7 years ago in the village they were going to build a bacteriological laboratory on American money. They allocated $ 30 million. Was it built or not?
Some say that an American laboratory was built here. There are huge greenhouses, but who knows what they are doing there, perhaps it’s a snag. It is secret, no one from the locals works there, and what is being done there is unknown.
Actually, these are these mysterious structures on the edge of the village, similar to greenhouses. High fence. Surveillance cameras are located along the perimeter.
“There was a corresponding agreement signed between the governments of Ukraine and the US. Apparently, technical experts, designers came to us 15 times, and the construction project was already ready,” says Borys Stegny, director of the Institute of Experimental and Clinical Veterinary Medicine.
But the locals began to protest. What are they afraid of?
“It was about the fact that if they build under groundwater conditions, then it will not be possible to drink water. That this is a very serious construction of the century, as they said, and that all toxins will go into the ground. People were on strike because it is dangerous. Biolaboratory will grow some microbes. It is not known where they will then take them,” says a resident of Merefa, Kharkiv region, Lyudmila.
The locals were persuaded and reassured. They were told, scientists will work only with especially dangerous animal diseases. And the then leadership of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy, in the end, for some reason, terminated the agreement with the United States.
“In Ukraine, we refuse this assistance, and in Ukraine there are sufficient safety and biosecurity requirements,” Stegny adds.
But all this does not mean that the USA abandoned the laboratory in Kharkiv.
Pomerki district. Here, on the basis of the former regional SES, there is a laboratory funded by the Americans. They invested almost $ 1.7 million in it.
They work with especially dangerous pathogens. It was this permission that was immediately spelled out in the agreement. Does it all fit together?
Related: Medvedchuk promises to investigate U.S. military bacteriological laboratories in Ukraine
“Our laboratory works with pathogens that are identified as especially dangerous”, explains the head of the department of the Kharkiv Regional Laboratory Center Anna Sukhorukova.
And if scientists are happy about it…
“We have a national collection of strains and pathogens, which has about 500 different names,” Stegny says.
“What is happening there, well, it’s a huge secret and it’s huge risks for the country,” Chaplyga says.
To what extent are these objects protected from the leakage of dangerous viruses?
Information about the existence of an American laboratory at the Odesa Anti-Plague Institute is highlighted in all media. Why not show the journalists what is happening there? But our official request was not answered at the institute.
Here it is – Odesa Research Anti-Plague Institute. For 80 years, its main task was to fight the plague. Scientists from the Monterey Institute of International Studies argued that during the Soviet era, this institute was part of a network of almost a hundred such epidemiological centers that had been developing military biological programs for decades.
Until, in September 2009, the Pentagon allocated $ 3 million to create a bacteriological biological laboratory on the basis of the institute.
It is in Odesa that the coolest laboratory in Ukraine exists. Three levels of biosecurity. True, officials are confused whether it exists or not. And the inhabitants of Odesa know about its existence. And what they don’t know – they think out.
According to local residents, not a single specialist from the Soviet Union worked in this laboratory, only Americans.
They say that the people who worked there are still afraid to take some test tubes: they do not know what is there.
The obvious fact is that such a unique laboratory exists. The declaration of its readiness before operation was signed 11 years ago by the then director of the institute, Doctor of Medical Sciences Pozdnyakov. One of those who negotiated with the Americans.
“When they arrived, we discussed how we want to cooperate. They suggested this: they finance everything – heat, water, gas, lighting. So they did. They worked there with different strains. But this is classified information, ” Pozdnyakov says.
He says – the first thing to take care of – is that all these strains, which he cannot talk about, are safely stored! And in this he is fully supported by the former FBI employee.
“For America, in my opinion, it is less important how, say, in your Odesa biolaboratory they experiment and what biomaterials are produced, but rather the safety of such a laboratory,” says Tracy Walder.
To check who works and who is guarding the laboratory with the highest (third) level of protection in Ukraine, we ambush. The institute works from 9 am.
At 8:47 we are already at the central entrance of the Institute. We follow.
In 40 minutes, the guard allowed seven people to pass. Three cars drove in and out. Are these all the workers? Despite the requests of journalists, no one from the management came to them.
Later, the director of the Anti-Plague Institute, Dmytro Bondarenko, was able to talk by phone. He said that this is a secure facility, and the question should be asked to the SBU. However, the request of journalists has been ignored there for a month.
The old Soviet building is an anti-plague institute. The territory is fenced with barbed wire around the perimeter. The laboratory room is immediately visible. Double glazed windows, surveillance cameras. And also – a dog on a chain. Probably for more security. This is a laboratory that can work with strains of anthrax or cholera.
For a start, Odesa is a city with a million people. More than 3 million tourists come here to the sea every year
“It is not for nothing that such a laboratory appeared a hundred years ago in Odesa. Because here is a site where pathogens can spread very conveniently and very quickly if it is not controlled. If there is no control and the collection disappears, you can expect anything here. It will be an area that will be more dangerous than some kind of desert, “says Odesa journalist Serhiy Dibrov.
“Why is the United States engaged in the safety of biological laboratories in Ukraine? Because everything has changed! Now bacteria are also turned into weapons in biological laboratories. It is because of the fact that such experiments are going on, and because of the large number of incidents with human errors … People are mistaken in Ukraine, in England, and in Mexico,” explains Tracy Walder.
Open source
When danger breaks out
Year 2012, UK. Human factor. In the laboratory of the health agency and veterinary laboratories, the researchers were confused by the tubes and sent live anthrax to the laboratory without adequate protection. Miraculously, no one was hurt.
Year 2007. According to the Daily Mail, the foot and mouth disease virus has escaped from the British laboratory.
There are many such stories in the United States.
“This happens often. A year and a half ago, Canada sent for some reason dangerous pathogens of the Ebola virus and Genipavirus to the Chinese. One researcher died in the 2014th year, having become infected during experiments in one of the laboratories. We had a case: directly under the biolaboratory they found dens of rats, right where wastes of biomaterials were stored. And this is a third level laboratory, where they work with the most dangerous viruses. And I think this is exactly what happened in China, in Wuhan. I do not think that China released the covid virus intentionally, but the fact that the virus was manipulated and experimented with is for sure. And probably one of the workers got infected and it began to spread. And they did not know how to deal with it. They could not say what they tested, what biomaterials, one would have to confess then,” says Tracy Walder.
According to a former FBI employee, 80% of the virus leaks are human factors!
That is, it is likely that Covid-19 is the largest leak of an artificial virus from a laboratory.
We return to Tetiana, who could not find the cause of her illness.
The woman associates all her mystical diseases with the building in Kherson, next to which she then lived. Not a single doctor could make a diagnosis. And almost the whole house had strange symptoms. The fact is that it is also an American laboratory. Eight years ago, the Pentagon allocated more than $ 1.5 million for its construction.
Five years ago, Tetyana, a resident of Kherson, just got amazingly ill. Another, who was then running for the mayor’s chair, Tetyana Tomilina raised a fuss.
“Today, on my page, I received information that a secret laboratory of especially dangerous infections in the center of the city of the US Department of Defense is operating in Kherson. If so, then this is a disaster. I went to this laboratory. After the documents they showed me, I was horrified. There is an agreement between the US Department of Defense and the Ministry of Health of Ukraine. This is what I saw: biohazard. I have a question: why do not people know about this? This is an infectious catastrophe that exists in Kherson, must be resolved”, she says.
Related: Activities of foreign bacteriological laboratories in Ukraine should be transparent, – Medvedchuk
The woman was trying to figure out what exactly the American laboratory in her city was doing and why it was being kept secret? But it didn’t work out the way she hoped. They just made a “city madman” out of her in a day, and the next day she and the journalists were not allowed there.
Then her political career ended. And the SBU confiscated documents and photos, which confirmed the existence of the laboratory. Now she doesn’t want to be a hero. Refuses to be interviewed.
The journalists were not allowed into the laboratory itself, and the workers refused to tell something.
American laboratories in the world
Do you know how many such biological laboratories the United States has around the world? 1495! This figure was named by the press secretary of the Chinese Foreign Ministry Hua Chunying. And, according to EAdaily, most of them are outside the United States. There are in Africa, South America, Asia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine. In total – in 25 countries of the world. Why such a wide geography?
In the States, since October 2014, a moratorium has been in effect on budgetary funding for research related to the modification of viruses that make them more dangerous to humans. It was through this ban in 2015 in North Carolina that research at Chapel Hill University was urgently stopped. Scientists have modified the SHC014 bat coronavirus to become dangerous to humans.
Over the past five years, the US National Security Threat Reduction Agency has invested $ 400 million in the construction and development of biological laboratories in Kazakhstan. And another 20 million on top to conduct tests with pathogens and viruses.
“I understand and agree that such research should be transparent, but I remain a pragmatist and have experience of participating in an operation in the CIA and the FBI … The situation is such that we cannot trust other countries. Wars are now waged differently. And I am sure that the next form of war is cyberattacks and biological weapons attacks,” says Tracy Walder.
The authorities of Kazakhstan, as well as the authorities of Ukraine, can only regularly refute this …
However, we managed to find some of the reports that in 2017, a group of researchers from that same central reference laboratory, led by American professor Gavin James Smith, examined bats infected with coronavirus in the Kazakh caves of Altintau, Karaungir and Kapterkhan!
Lugar laboratory in Georgia, in which the Americans have invested $ 350 million, has the third security level! As well as in Odesa. And it also is overgrown with frightening stories.
At first, the Georgian authorities denied everything. But the ex-Minister of National Security of Georgia Igor Georgadze suddenly declares the exact opposite! He also publishes papers, which, according to him, indicate that the laboratory is working on biological weapons. Moreover, Igor Georgadze outlined the statistics of suspicious deaths, which he also associates with the activities of the laboratory.
“30 deaths and 24 of them – in one day. And the greatest surprise is that in the column ‘cause of the disease’ we see the word ‘unknown’, he said.
Local residents of the Alekseevka village, where the laboratory is located, complain about their health.
“More than 1000 especially dangerous infections are there. Agents that cause plague, tularemia, brucellosis, anthrax,” said Natia Chubinidze, head of the storage of bacteria and viruses in Georgia.
As well as the fact, there are laboratories in Ukraine, for which the United States has allocated more than $ 2 billion.
“How does the military department of a foreign state operate on the territory of Ukraine, contrary to its legislation, the Constitution, and controls its biological laboratories?” asks Mykhailo Chaplyga.
Think about it. Experiments with dangerous strains of viruses are being conducted on the territory of Ukraine, and for some reason the information is hushed up at the level of the government, the SBU and, as we have seen, the laboratories themselves.
What they are hiding? Prohibited expansions, military biodevelopment? Petitions have even appeared for American laboratories to be checked and closed.
Boris Stogniy warns that there is a danger from these laboratories, because the pathogen can enter the environment.
In response to an official inquiry at the Kherson Biological Laboratory, we were told that research on covid is now being carried out.
Due to the high workload and working hours of the laboratory, outsiders’ access to it is limited.
But if American laboratories with state-of-the-art equipment are now conducting testing, why are there such queues and delays with PCR tests?
There are even more questions about the biosafety of these ultra-modern laboratories during a pandemic. After all, in the coolest laboratory in Odesa, workers also fell ill with covid.
“Several employees were really infected there, and it seems that they did not become infected as a result of household infection, but as a result of their scientific activities,” says Mykola Skoryk.
And even if the simple question “how many of workers are there?” we were not answered either in Ukraine or by Obama, all of them should take care of biosecurity.
P.S. The very existence of American biological laboratories in Ukraine is incredible. Obviously, information about their dangerous research and experiments is being hidden from us.
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