Briefing on the results of the analysis of documents related to the military biological activities of the United States on the territory of Ukraine (April 14, 2022)
A special military operation by Russian troops has yielded additional information on US military and biological activities in Ukraine, confirming numerous violations of the Biological Weapons Convention.
Taking advantage of existing gaps in international law and the lack of a clear verification mechanism, the US administration has consistently built up its military-biological capabilities in various regions of the world.
The Russian Federation has made continuous efforts to establish a BTWC verification mechanism, but this initiative has been consistently blocked by the collective West, led by the US, since 2001.
The existing UN Secretary-General's Mechanism to Investigate the Suspected Use of Biological and Toxin Weapons, as well as the 1925 Geneva Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases and Bacteriological Methods of Warfare and Military Conflict, do not cover the verification of States Parties' biological activities. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, based in The Hague, has no such authority either.
We have previously provided a scheme for US coordination of biological laboratories and research institutes in Ukraine.
One of its elements is the Ukrainian Science and Technology Centre (STCU), a seemingly non-public organisation that has nothing to do with the Pentagon.
The Russian Defence Ministry has managed to uncover its role in US military and biological activities in Ukraine.
According to its statutes, the STCU is an international intergovernmental organisation established to "...prevent the spread of knowledge and expertise related to weapons of mass destruction...".
Its legal status is defined by the Agreement of October 25, 1993 between the governments of Ukraine, Canada, the USA and Sweden and the Protocol of Amendment of July 7, 1997.
STCU is headquartered in Kiev and has regional offices in Baku, Chisinau and Tbilisi, as well as in Kharkov and Lvov.
However, the Russian Ministry of Defence's Chemical and Biological Threat Expertise Centre found that the STCU's main activity is to act as a distribution centre for grants for research of interest to the Pentagon, including biological weapons research.
In recent years alone, Washington has spent more than $350 million on STCU projects.
The U.S. customers and sponsors of STCU are the Department of State and the Department of Defense. Funding is also provided through the Environmental Protection Agency, the US Departments of Agriculture, Health and Energy.
In addition, note the document prepared by the STCU curators, dated March 11, 2022, which underlines the true nature of this organisation. It notes, quote: "...there has been an outflow of scientific experts in the development of means of delivery and advanced weaponry who have worked for Ukrainian institutions, as well as experts in the development of biological, radiological, chemical and nuclear weapons. The best-trained professionals with experience of working with dual-use materials and technologies (between 1,000 and 4,000) have found themselves in unfavourable professional and financial circumstances. This makes them vulnerable to defection to other states to participate in programmes to develop WMD, delivery systems and other weapons...".
By using such words, Washington actually acknowledges Ukrainian experts' work on the development of weapons of mass destruction delivery and use, and considers it appropriate to continue funding them.
Here are the names of the officials who were involved in the military-biological programmes.
The post of STCU executive director is held by Bjelajac Curtis Michael, a US citizen. Born August 27, 1968 in California, he studied at California's Anderson University of Management. He holds a master's degree in international finance and has worked in Ukraine since 1994.
The European Union chairman of the STCU board is Maier Eddie Arthur; the US chairman is Phil Dolliff, who is the State Department's Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Security and WMD Nonproliferation Programmes.
Documents received by the Russian Ministry of Defence confirm STCU's ties to the US military department. The slide shows a formal recommendation from the US State Department endorsing the STCU's cooperation with the Pentagon's main contractor, Black & Veach. The correspondence expresses the willingness of Matthew Webber, the company's vice president, to work with the STCU on ongoing military-biological research in Ukraine.
Between 2014 and 2022, the Ukrainian Science and Technology Centre implemented five hundred R&D projects in post-Soviet countries (Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova and Azerbaijan).
US supervisors were primarily interested in dual-use research, such as project 6166, Development of Technologies for Modelling, Evaluation and Prediction of Effects of Conflicts and Threats of Mass Destruction Weapons Spread, and project 9601, Transfer of Ukrainian Technologies for the Production of Complex Dual-Use Materials to the European Union.
Many of them are aimed at studying potential biological weapons agents (plague, tularaemia) and pathogens of economic importance (pathogenic avian influenza, African swine fever).
Projects P-364, 444, and 781, aimed at studying the spread of dangerous pathogens through insect vectors, wild birds, and bats, were funded by the Centre directly in the interests of the military department.
Note the documents of Project 3007 "Monitoring of the epidemiological and environmental situation regarding hazardous diseases of aquatic origin in Ukraine".
During the work, Ukrainian specialists, supervised by American scientists, systematically collected water samples in a number of major Ukrainian rivers, including the Dnepr, Danube and Dniester, as well as in the North Crimean Canal, to determine the presence of particularly dangerous pathogens, including cholera, typhoid, hepatitis A and E pathogens, and draw conclusions about their possible waterborne spread.
The project assessed the damage properties of the selected samples and deposited the strains in a collection and subsequently exported them to the USA.
This is a map of Ukraine's water resources. Its analysis shows that the results of this work can be used to create an unfavourable biological situation not only in the Russian Federation, but also in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, as well as in Eastern Europe - Belarus, Moldova and Poland.
Our concern about Washington's activities in Ukraine stems from the fact that, contrary to its international obligations, the US has retained norms in its national legislation that allow for work in the field of biological weapons.
The ratification of the 1925 Geneva Protocol by the United States was accompanied by a number of reservations, one of which allows for the retaliatory use of chemical and toxin weapons.
Under the US Federal Unity and Cohesion Against Terrorism Act, research into biological weapons is permitted with the approval of the US government. Participants in such research are not criminally liable for developing such weapons.
Thus, the US administration is implementing the principle that domestic law takes precedence over international law in this area. The most ethically controversial research is conducted outside national jurisdictions.
Thus, during the special operation in Ukraine, it was established that US scientists from a laboratory in Merefa (Kharkov Region) were testing potentially dangerous biological drugs on patients of the regional clinical psychiatric hospital No 3 in Kharkov between 2019 and 2021.
Persons with mental disorders were selected for the experiments on the basis of their age, nationality and immune status. Special forms were used to record the results of 24-hour patient monitoring. The information was not entered into the hospital database and the staff of the medical institution signed a non-disclosure agreement.
In January 2022, the laboratory in Merefa was shut down and all equipment and preparations were moved to western Ukraine.
There are a number of witnesses to these inhuman experiments, whose names we cannot disclose for the sake of their safety.
Finally, in a previous briefing we described a technical device for the delivery and application of biological formulations that has been patented in the US.
At the same time, it was noted that Ukraine had sent a request to the manufacturing company regarding the possibility of equipping the Bayraktar drones with aerosol equipment.
It is a matter of concern that on March9, three unmanned aerial vehicles equipped with 30-litre containers and equipment for spraying formulations were detected by Russian reconnaissance units in Kherson region.
In January 2022, Ukraine reportedly purchased more than 50 such devices through intermediary organisations, which can be used to apply biological formulations and toxic chemicals.
We continue to analyse the evidence of crimes committed by the US administration and the Kiev regime in Ukraine.