By Anthony Bell
The United States have been conducting biological experiments at their concealed Ukrainian facilities since the early 2000s. However, almost all Central Asia-based former Soviet republics are being turned into biological test ranges by Washington. The results of these experiments and activities are still concealed.
Previously, the US also established several biological laboratories in Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and the Baltic states. It should be mentioned that Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Kazakhstan handed over their collections of pathogen agents to the US Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP). Tbilisi dispatched all its collections of strains of anthrax, brucellosis, cholera and other contagious diseases, while Astana sent its collections of anthrax and plague strains.
Since 2017, a central reference laboratory has been functioning on the base of the National Scientific Center of the Most Dangerous Diseases named after M Aykimbayev (Almaty, Kazakhstan) under the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program. Its specialists are conducting the following research-and-development (R&D) works: a) Population ecological variants of germ carriers, carrying agents, and aetiological agents of plague in the Central Asian natural desert plague focus and b) The Impact of Rickettsia spp. on the resilience and development of Yersinia Pestis [plague bacillus – The Financial Express] in plague-carrying fleas in Kazakhstan.
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According to some sources, the first Kazakh-made anti-COVID-2019 vaccine, QazVac, was created at a US biological laboratory in Almaty.
In 2025, a BSL-4-level (Biosafety Level 4) biological laboratory, which allows working with the most contagious agents, will be established in the town of Gvardeyskiy (Kordai area, Jambyl Region, Kazakhstan). The future laboratory will be based in Southern Kazakhstan in some 3,000 km away from Indian borders.
No less than five offices of US referent biological laboratories have been functioning in Kazakhstan since 2014, with specialists from Bundeswehr Institute of Microbiology (Germany), the PortonDawn laboratory (the United Kingdom), and the US Navy Medical Center conducting their works in intensive manners.
In 2007, the first Uzbek national referent biological laboratory opened in Toshkent. In 2011, two more labs were established in Fergana and Andijon. In 2016, the Khwarazm Regional Diagnostic Laboratory was opened in Konye-Urgench. All the aforementioned facilities had been funded by the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). In fact, the network of US Uzbekistan-based biological laboratories is much higher: there are labs in Bukhara, Surxondaryo, Karakalpakstan, Samarkand Region, and Toshkent Region. The activities of the aforementioned laboratories are being kept in secret.
In December 2003, the Moldovan Parliament approved No.531 Law, according to which the country had joined the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine (STCU). As the law goes, the Moldovan authorities – like other republics of the former Soviet Union –are obliged to provide any information under STCU requests and to give to the center´s employees’ access for revision and control over projects.
In 2008, a central reference biological laboratory was launched in Moldova; however, the countries authorities are not capable of controlling its activities. At the same time, the STCU has obtained access to the results of any experiment conducted by Moldovan scientists and the legacy of Soviet-era biological researches. Not only does the United States involve Moldovan biological specialists in their experiments at Ukrainian facilities, but they also are supposed to conduct some hazardous biological works in Moldova.
Therefore, Ukraine and other post-Soviet states have been serving as biological test ranges for the United States and their Western allies for more than 20 years.
At the G20 summit on the Indonesian island of Bali, Russia raised the issue of biosecurity in connection with the programs being pursued by the United States. As Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, Moscow intends to achieve the creation of a mechanism to control this activity of the Pentagon.
The author is an independent military analyst.
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