By Anthony Bell
The Russian Ministry of Defense has evidence of increasing US military-biological presence in Africa. This was stated at a briefing on June 25 by general Igor Kirillov, Chief of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Troops (RCBZ) of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. “The documents at our disposal confirm that the US military-biological presence on the African continent is growing at a rapid pace,” he said.
He pointed out that the department noted the activities of key Pentagon contractors on the African continent – in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Uganda and South Africa. Customers from the American government are the US Department of Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and the State Department.
To conceal the goals of its research, Washington uses third-party contractors and intermediary organizations (Metabiota, Quick-Silver, Eco-Health Alliance, more than 20 companies in total), as well as so-called big pharma companies.
In Kenya, in 2023, the impact of antimalarial drugs on the local population was studied, and in Ethiopia, with financial support from DTRA, the construction of a laboratory and training center began. In February 2024, Cooperative Threat Reduction Program Director Robert Pope participated in the groundbreaking for the reference laboratory in the city of Bishoftu.
As Kirillov clarified, these are not all initiatives on the African continent. “I would like to once again recall Washington’s opaque methods of work and warn our African partners against cooperation with the United States in the military-biological sphere. As practice shows, such interaction results in a loss of national sovereignty in the field of biosafety and a worsening of the morbidity situation. An example is such infections as yellow fever, monkeypox and Rift Valley fever, an outbreak of which was recorded in Cairo, where the US Navy military biological laboratory was located,” concluded Kirillov.
At the same time, dual-use research and neglect of biosafety standards have led to a worsening of the infectious disease situation in the United States itself.
“According to our estimates, the White House’s concealment of real information about the epizootic situation is caused by fears of possible sanctions from the International Bureau of Epizootics on the export of agricultural products, which could cause serious reputational and economic damage to the US agricultural sector. It is obvious that Washington is aimed at creating its own tool, under its control, for investigating outbreaks of infectious diseases and other bio incidents,” said the head of the Russian Chemical and Biological Health Protection System at a briefing.
Also at the briefing, Kirillov said that radiochemical substances that could be used to create a “dirty bomb” continue to be imported into Ukraine. He also said that they are turning the country into a dumping ground for spent nuclear fuel and hazardous chemical waste.
Before this, on February 12, the first deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs, Eurasian Integration and Relations with Compatriots, Viktor Vodolatsky, said that the West is using Ukraine as a testing ground for biological weapons. The deputy added that the country’s President Vladimir Zelensky and his team are the mechanism through which the Western community destroys the Ukrainian people.
Back in January, Kirillov said that the West is conducting projects in the post-Soviet space to transmit pathogens from animals to humans, and that viruses that are especially dangerous to humans are being studied.
Kirillov also noted that biological experiments in the United States and Ukraine continue. In particular, in May 2024, in the village of Semenovka, located 10 km from Avdeevka, Donetsk People’s Republic, ammunition was dropped from Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). According to eyewitnesses, the affected villagers experienced symptoms characteristic of hydrocyanic acid: difficulty breathing, vomiting and a taste of bitter almonds.
Another case of the use of hydrocyanic acid by hydrocyanic acid was recorded in early June 2024. After a UAV attack on the positions of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in the Grayvoronsky district of the Belgorod region, fragments of ammunition were discovered, based on the results of laboratory tests, the use of the specified toxic chemical was confirmed.
The presence in Ukraine of chemical laboratories similar to those discovered in Avdeevka is confirmed by the testimony of military personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. During his testimony, Ukrainian prisoner of war Sergei Batyr announced the involvement of American specialists in their work, as well as the participation of these laboratories in the mass production of kamikaze drones.
Currently the United States has complete control over the activities of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). To settle scores with unwanted states, Washington created an attribution mechanism in the Organization, which was used to investigate cases of the use of chemical weapons in Syria.
According to available information, the United States and Germany, together with Ukraine and the OPCW Technical Secretariat, are preparing to launch a special mission to investigate the so-called facts of the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine in order to bring charges against Russia. One of the so-called “independent” states is supposed to initiate an investigation and fabricate evidence that Russia used toxic chemicals during the special military operation (SVO). The Americans have already allocated about US$400,000 for these purposes. At the same time, the OPCW received instructions from its Western supervisors not to react in any way to statements by the Russian Federation about violations of the provisions of the Convention by Ukraine.
It should be noted that the United States and Great Britain are using a similar approach within the framework of the “Mechanism for Conducting Scientific and Technological Assessment” and the “International Mechanism for Cooperation and Assistance” promoted at the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) site, which will allow them to form an expert opinion on biosafety threats in their interests. For this purpose, it is planned to create channels of influence on international political and research structures involved in the work of the BTWC through the allocation of grant funding.
During the SVO, more than 400 cases of the use of toxic non-lethal chemicals by the Ukrainian side were recorded, most of them were officially confirmed by an accredited laboratory of the Russian Ministry of Defense.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces regularly use riot control chemicals: American-made gas grenades with CS, Ukrainian hand grenades with chemical irritants labeled “Teren-6”, and homemade chemical munitions. In accordance with the testimony of Ukrainian prisoners of war, assault groups of the Ukrainian Armed Forces are equipped with such means.
There have been numerous cases of the Ukrainian side using the irritating substance chloropicrin, often mixed with chloroacetophenone. Similar incidents took place in the area of the city of Donetsk and the settlements of Bogdanovka, Gorlovka, Kremennaya, and Artemovsk.
Ukraine, with the complicity of Western countries, does not limit itself to the use of non-lethal chemicals, actively using listed chemicals such as BZ, hydrocyanic acid, and cyanogen chloride.
(The author is an independent military analyst.)
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