Moscow’s basic terms for a peace deal with Kiev; Ukraine continues attacks on Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant

From Startegic Stability
May 28, 2023

1. Russia outlined conditions for a peace accord

The Ukraine conflict could be settled if Kiev were to re-commit to its neutral status, recognize “new territorial realities,” and declare Russian as a state language, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin said in an interview released on May 28. He is convinced that a peace settlement will be possible only if the Ukrainian Armed Forces cease aggression against Russia, and Western weapons shipments to Kiev are stopped completely.

Galuzin added that to achieve a durable peace, Kiev must return to a non-aligned status and refuse to join NATO, recognize the “new territorial realities” that emerged after people in Ukraine exercised their right to self-determination in 2014 and 2022.

The diplomat was referring to Crimea and four former Ukrainian regions that overwhelmingly voted to join Russia in public referenda, respectively, in 2014 and 2022.

Deputy Foreign Minister noted that another crucial element of any peace settlement is Kiev’s commitment to respect the rights of the country’s Russian-speaking population and other ethnic minorities. “Russian should be designated as a state language at the legislative level. It is necessary to ensure that basic human rights, including freedom of faith, are observed in Ukraine,” he stressed.

On May 28, Mikhail Podoliak, an aide to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, dismissed Moscow’s conditions, issuing Kiev’s own list of demands. Those include the immediate withdrawal of all Russian troops from territory Kiev claims as its own, the creation of a “buffer zone” on Russian territory, as well as voluntary renunciation of Russian assets seized in other countries in favor of Ukraine.

Earlier this week, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said that while Moscow does not want the Ukraine conflict to be frozen, there are no prerequisites for a peace settlement yet, pointing out that Kiev has prohibited any talks with the current Russian leadership.

2. Russia expects its sanctions to follow against Kiev

Ukraine’s “puppeteers” in London and Washington start begin to concern themselves with mental stability of top officials in Kiev and Russia hopes that sanctions against the Ukrainian leadership will follow over the threats against Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview published on May 27.

“I have no doubts that the puppeteers in Washington and London begin to concern themselves with how mentally stable these people are,” the Minister said. “I hope that sanctions will follow against these so-called officials. All statements that it is necessary to kill all Russians, wherever they are – that was said both by [Ukrainian Presidential Office Head Advisor Mikhail] Podolyak and [National Defense and Security Council Secretary Alexey] Danilov – and now personal [threats] against a leader of a sovereign state, the Russian Federation – is the most serious thing.”

Lavrov also stated that Ukraine is a terrorist state, with its authorities “driving themselves into this quality.”

Commenting on the threats against the Russian leadership, Lavrov underscored that a word has been uttered, and the West must bear responsibility for these words.”.

3. Rogov: Kiev is plotting new provocation at ZNPP

Ukraine is plotting a provocation at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) to put the blame on Russia and cut short the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) mission, Vladimir Rogov, leader of the We Are Together With Russia movement, told TASS on May 26. “Ukraine is announcing this strike in order to accuse us – and this is obvious, so that IAEA inspectors are not present [at the station] any longer,” he said, commenting of allegation by the Ukrainian defense ministry’s main intelligence directorate that Russia was hatching a provocation at the nuclear facility.

He noted that tensions around the Zaporozhye NPP have been growing in recent time. “Moreover, the rotation of the IAEA experts [at the ZNPP] has been postponed again. Vasilyevka is under shelling all the time: they are using artillery, HIMARS [multiple rocket launchers], and so on. Plus, an attempted terror attack on a journalist from federal mass media in Enerhodar to demonstrate that the situation in the city is too bad to visit it,” Rogov said.

Kiev is drawing attention to this topic, which means that it “is really plotting something,” he said. “Bearing in mind that they have both Grom-2 and Storm Shadow, and other weapons they can use, if the announce that, it is highly likely that they already have a scenario, he added.

Renat Karchaa, an adviser to the director general of Russia’s Rosenergoatom nuclear power engineering company, told TASS earlier on Friday that Ukraine had once again derailed the rotation of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) due to take place on May 26 following a postponement. In his words, no date has been appointed as of yet. The ninth team of IAEA experts was to arrive at the ZNPP on May 25. According to Karchaa, Kiev has once again demonstrated the lack of interest in ensuring nuclear security as the Ukrainian authorities are indulging in “shady games, which have no relations to nuclear energy.”

Despite all massive Kiev’s military provocations and artillery shelling of the ZNPP, the IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi since February 2022 has not made any critical remarks on continuous Ukrainian nuclear blackmail Involving NPP, prohibited by the international law.

‘Weaponized’ genetically engineered insects? DOD funding $27 million ‘Insect Allies’ project

Posted by Children’s Health Defense
May25, 2023
Originally posted October 23, 2018
For full article and references
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/weaponized-genetically-engineered-insect-allies-cola/

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, an arm of the U.S. Department of Defense, is planning to use insects to deliver genetically engineered viruses to crops, with the aim of altering the plant’s genetic traits in the field.

By Joseph Mercola MD

Story at a glance:

  • Scientists and legal scholars question the rationale for the use of insects to disperse infectious genetically engineered (GE) viruses engineered to edit the chromosomes in plants, warning that the technology could very easily be weaponized.
  • This Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program is the first to propose and fund the development of viral horizontal environmental genetic alteration agents with the capacity to perform genetic engineering in the environment.
  • The $27 million project, called “Insect Allies,” is trying to take advantage of insects’ natural ability to spread crop diseases, but instead of carrying disease, they would spread plant-protective traits.
  • The opinion paper “Agricultural Research, or a New Bioweapon System?” argues that if plant modification were really the ultimate goal, a far simpler and more targeted agricultural delivery system could be used.
  • There are also serious concerns about environmental ramifications, as the insects’ spread cannot be controlled. It would also be impossible to prevent the insects from genetically modifying organic crops.

Genetic engineering is being used in myriad ways these days, despite the fact we know very little about the long-term ramifications of such meddling in the natural order.

For example, DARPA, an arm of the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), is now planning to use insects to deliver GE viruses to crops, with the aim of altering the plant’s genetic traits in the field.

The $27 million DARPA project called “Insect Allies” (see video below) is basically trying to take advantage of insects’ natural ability to spread crop diseases, but instead of carrying disease-causing genes, they would carry plant-protective traits.

As explained by The Washington Post:

“Recent advances in gene editing, including the relatively cheap and simple system known as CRISPR (for clustered regularly interspaced palindromic repeats), could potentially allow researchers to customize viruses to achieve a specific goal in the infected plant.

“The engineered virus could switch on or off certain genes that, for example, control a plant’s growth rate, which could be useful during an unexpected, severe drought.”

youtu(dot)be/T6ENYFliwUI

‘Insect Allies’ project raises concerns about bioterror use

However, scientists and legal scholars question the rationale for the use of insects to disperse infectious GE viruses engineered to edit the chromosomes in plants, warning that the technology could very easily be weaponized.

The opinion paper “Agricultural Research, or a New Bioweapon System?” published on Oct. 4, 2018, in the journal Science questions DARPA’s Insect Allies project, saying it could be perceived as a threat by the international community, and that if plant modification were really the ultimate goal, a far simpler agricultural delivery system could be used.

Jason Delborne, associate professor at North Carolina State University, has expertise in GE and its consequences.

He told Gizmodo:

“The social, ethical, political, and ecological implications of producing HEGAAs [horizontal environmental genetic alteration agents] are significant and worthy of the same level of attention as exploring the science underpinning the potential technology.

“The authors argue persuasively that specifying insects as the preferred delivery mechanism for HEGAAs is poorly justified by visions of agricultural applications.

“The infrastructure and expertise required for spraying agricultural fields — at least in the U.S. context — is well established, and this delivery mechanism would offer greater control over the potential spread of a HEGAA.”

The team has also created a website to accompany the paper, the stated aim of which is “to contribute toward fostering an informed and public debate about this type of technology.”

On this site, you can also find a link to download the 38-page DARPA work plan. DARPA, meanwhile, insists the project’s goal is strictly to protect the U.S. food supply.

A DARPA spokesperson told The Independent:

“[S]prayed treatments are impractical for introducing protective traits on a large scale and potentially infeasible if the spraying technology cannot access the necessary plant tissues with specificity, which is a known problem.

“If Insect Allies succeeds, it will offer a highly specific, efficient, safe, and readily deployed means of introducing transient protective traits into only the plants intended, with minimal infrastructure required.”

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Agriculture are also participating in the research, which is currently restricted to contained laboratories. Still, many are unconvinced by DARPA’s claims of peaceful aims.

The release of such insects could “play into longstanding fears among countries that enemies might try to harm their crops,” says Dr. David Relman, a former White House biodefense adviser and professor of medicine and microbiology at Stanford.

According to The Associated Press (AP):

“Guy Reeves, a co-author of the Science paper and a biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany, says the technology is more feasible as a weapon — to kill plants — than as an agricultural tool. As a result, he said DARPA could be sending an alarming message regardless of its intentions.”

Unforeseen ramifications abound

Others are concerned about environmental ramifications, regardless of whether the genetic traits being delivered to the plants are perceived as beneficial or harmful.

According to DARPA, none of the insects would be able to survive for more than two weeks, but what if such guarantees fail? What if nature finds a way? If so, the insects’ spread could be near-unlimited.

Gregory Kaebnick, an ethicist at the Hastings Center bioethics research institute in Garrison, New York, told the AP he’s concerned the project may end up causing unforeseen environmental destruction, as insects will be virtually impossible to eradicate once released. If it turns out the genetic modification traits they carry are harmful, there will be no going back.

Yet others, such as Fred Gould, an entomologist at North Carolina State University who chaired a National Academy of Sciences panel on genetically modified food, believe the project’s stated goal of altering genetic traits of plants via insects is near-impossible in the first place.

However, while the research is still in its initial phase, they already have proof of concept. In one test, an aphid infected a mature corn plant with a GE virus carrying a gene for fluorescence, creating a fluorescent corn plant.

Open scientific debate is needed

Reeves questions why there’s been virtually no open scientific debate about the technology.

According to Reeves, who is an expert on GE insects, the Insect Allies project is “largely unknown even in expert circles,” which in and of itself raises a red flag about its true intent.

He told The Independent, “It is very much easier to kill or sterilize a plant using gene editing than it is to make it herbicide- or insect-resistant.”

Felix Beck, a lawyer at the University of Freiburg, added:

“The quite obvious question of whether the viruses selected for development should or should not be capable of plant-to-plant transmission — and plant-to-insect-to-plant transmission — was not addressed in the DARPA work plan at all.”

How horizontal environmental genetic alteration agents work

As explained in the featured paper, the technology DARPA is using is known as horizontal environmental genetic alteration agents or HEGAAs.

Essentially, HEGAAs are GE viruses capable of editing the chromosomes of a target species, be it a plant or an animal.

The specificity of HEGAAs is dependent on:

  • The range of species the GE virus can infect
  • The presence of a specific DNA sequence in the chromosome that can then become infected

The image below illustrates how an insect-dispersed viral HEGAA would disrupt a specific plant gene.

As noted on the team’s website:

“Interest in genetically modified viruses, including HEGAAs, largely stems from their rapid speed of action, as infections can sweep quickly through target populations. This same property is also a serious safety concern, in that it makes it hard to predict where viruses geographically disperse to or what species they eventually infect.

“Probably due to the complex regulatory, biological, economic, and societal implications that need to be considered little progress has been made on how genetically modified viruses should be regulated when the intention is to disperse them in the environment.

“It is in this context that DARPA presented its Insect Allies work program in November 2016.”

DARPA technology may violate biological weapons convention

According to DARPA, the technology does not violate the United Nations (UN) Biological Weapons Convention.

However, according to the Science paper, it could be in breach of the UN’s convention if the research is unjustifiable.

Silja Voeneky, a specialist in international law at Freiburg University, told The Independent:

“Because of the broad ban of the Biological Weapons Convention, any biological research of concern must be plausibly justified as serving peaceful purposes.

“The Insect Allies Program could be seen to violate the Biological Weapons Convention, if the motivations presented by DARPA are not plausible.

“This is particularly true considering this kind of technology could easily be used for biological warfare.”

The Science team also calls for greater transparency from DARPA in order to discourage other countries from following suit and developing similar delivery technologies as a defensive measure.

Should we use technology that can eradicate entire species?

In a 2016 report, the Institute of Science in Society discussed the creation of transgenic mosquitoes, carrying genes against a malarial pathogen.

Using CRISPR/Cas9, a gene drive was created that makes virtually all progeny of the male transgenic mosquito carriers of this antimalaria gene.

However, the transgene was found to be unstable in female mosquitoes, and key safety issues were also raised, including:

  • To what extent might crossbreeding or horizontal gene transfer allow a drive to move beyond target populations?
  • For how long might horizontal gene transfer allow a drive to move beyond target populations?
  • Is it possible for a gene drive to evolve to regain drive capabilities in a nontarget population?

According to the Institute of Science in Society, answering these questions is “crucial in the light of the instability of the gene drive in transgenic female mosquitoes.”

As noted in the report:

“When these females bite animals including humans, there is indeed the possibility of horizontal gene transfer of parts, or the entire gene-drive construct, with potentially serious effects on animal and human health.

“Cas9 nuclease could insert randomly or otherwise into the host genome, causing insertion mutagenesis that could trigger cancer or activate dominant viruses. …

“Finally, the ecological risks of gene drives are enormous … As the gene drive can in principle lead to the extinction of a species, this could involve the species in its native habitat as well as where it is considered invasive. As distinct from conventional biological control, which can be applied locally, there is no way to control gene flow. …

“Because the CRISPR/Cas gene drive remains fully functional in the mutated strain after it is created, the chance of off-target mutations also remain and the likelihood increases with every generation.

“‘If there is any risk of gene flow between the target species and other species, then there is also a risk that the modified sequence could be transferred and the adverse trait manifested in nontarget organisms.’ (This commentary has not even begun to consider horizontal gene flow, which would multiply the risks manyfold.)”

DARPA brushes off concerns

James Stack, a plant pathologist at Kansas State University and a member of the advisory panel of DARPA’s Insect Allies project, believes the concerns raised in the Science paper are unfounded.

He told The Washington Post:

“I don’t understand the level of concern raised in this paper, and to jump ahead and accuse DARPA of using this as a screen to develop biological weapons is outrageous.

“There’s risk inherent in life and you just have to manage it well. And I think as we move into a more crowded planet it’s going to put increasing demands on our food systems, our water systems. We’re going to need all the tools in the tool box that we possibly have.”

Unfortunately, recent history demonstrates we’ve not been very capable of managing these kinds of man-made risks very well at all.

Just look at Roundup-resistant genetically modified food, for example, or electromagnetic field radiation from cellphones and wireless technologies, both of which have been shown to cause significant health and environmental problems since their inception.

There’s virtually no evidence to suggest mankind is very good at predicting the potential outcomes of our technological advancements, so unleashing gene-altering technologies that cannot be recalled or reversed seems foolish in the extreme.

As mentioned, the Insect Allies project may be particularly detrimental to organic and biodynamic farming, as it would be completely impossible to prevent these gene-altering insect vectors from infecting organic crops.

Originally published by Mercola.

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/weaponized-genetically-engineered-insect-allies-cola/

May 26 briefing by Russian MoD on U.S. military-biological activity

From Strategic Stability

Report # 249
May 27, 2023

POWERPOINT

The Ministry of Defence or MoD of the Russian Federation continues to analyze the military and biological activities of the U.S. and its allies in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world. On May 26, 2023 it released its updated report. Here is its abridged option.

Consequences for Russia

Moscow has noted the increase of bird flu cases in Russia and European countries, where, according to the International Office of Epizootics, the disease has become a year-round with losses exceeding €3 billion since 2021.

Since the beginning of 2023, there have been 32 outbreaks of Avian influenza recorded in Russia in all federal districts. In the last week in May 2023 alone, the disease was detected in poultry farms in the Kirov and Yaroslavl Regions. Quarantine measures for highly pathogenic Avian influenza have been imposed in Moscow since 17 May 2023.

At the same time, the total damage to the agricultural sector caused by the disease in the last three years has exceeded 4.5 billion Roubles, and more than 10 million poultry have been eliminated.

Consequences for Ukraine

The MoD noted earlier that during the Special Military Operation, documentary evidence was obtained confirming that employees of the Biosphere Reserve in Askania Nova, Kherson Region, Ukraine, were studying the migration routes of migratory birds and selecting and transferring biological material abroad.

The task force of the Russian Ministry of Defence together with officers of the Federal Security Service and Rosselkhoznadzor [Russian Agriculture Monitoring Agency] have confirmed the collection and certification of Avian influenza virus strains with a high potential for epidemic spread and the ability to cross the species barrier, particularly the H5N8 strain, whose lethality in human transmission can reach 40%. Compare: 1% of new coronavirus infections resulted in death.

Despite efforts by the Ukrainian staff to destroy the biomaterials in the U.S.-Ukrainian biolabs by cutting off the power to the refrigeration units and destroying the cryopreservoir with liquid nitrogen, specialists from the 48th Central Research Institute of the Russian MoD found traces of genetic material of highly pathogenic Avian influenza, Newcastle disease virus, and Avuloviruses even in the samples that had undergone decomposition. According to the employees who remained in the these labs, the Ukrainian side offered them a large cash reward for removing or destroying the research results.

Documents seized in the Reserve’s veterinary laboratory confirm the involvement of the Kharkov Institute of Veterinary Medicine in the work of the American UP-8 and P-444 Projects and preparations for the Flu-Fly-Way project. Their goal was to evaluate the circumstances in which the transmission of diseases associated with economically significant infections may become uncontrollable, result in economic harm, and constitute a threat to food security.

African swine fever and foot-and-mouth disease, which pose a serious threat to food security, have never been recorded in the USA, despite the fact that the U.S. has seen Avian influenza epizootics since 2003. At the same time, the U.S. military is actively studying these economically significant infections outside the national territory in bio-laboratories located along the borders of its geopolitical adversaries.

This demonstrates once more that the U.S. has been creating biological weapons components abroad, notably in Ukraine.

Documents obtained during the Special Military Operation show that for several years the Kharkov Institute of Veterinary Medicine Institute has been involved in training Ukrainian personnel as part of the Biological Threat Reduction Program. Robert Lipnik, head of the Epidemiology Department, and his subordinates were involved in the training of Ukrainian specialists. Representatives of the institute supervised military and biological projects UP-1 and UP-2, organized by DTRA, during which active collection of biomaterials of Ukrainian population was carried out. In the UP-1 project alone, more than 800 blood samples were collected under the pretext of studying the spread of tick-borne infections.

According to the documents possessed by Russia, the Walter Reed Institute was actively involved in the 2014-2020 Ukrainian aggression in Donbass in studying the antibiotic resistance of microbes isolated from military troops of the AFU.

As part of this project, 813 microorganisms obtained from 162 patients were studied in four Ukrainian military hospitals located in different parts of the country and full-genome sequencing of 52 isolates was carried out. It is understandable to wonder why the U.S. Army Institute would research the antibiotic resistance of microbes found in Donbass. This provides more proof that the U.S. considered Ukraine’s territory to be a base for the entry of NATO military forces.

Consequences for Italy

In December 2019, for example, the relocation of the U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit Three (NAMRU-3) from Cairo to Sicily’s Sigonella Air Base, Italy, has provoked an extremely negative reaction from Italian citizens.

According to the Italian media, the U.S. used the pandemic to divert public attention from the fact that the biolaboratory had been relocated.

As L’Antidiplomatico notes, that ‘it is highly suspicious that the opportunity to spread the word about this laboratory was not taken, if on paper its purpose is to study health threats’.

From all European countries it was Italy that was most seriously affected by the COVID-19 virus, and the Russian MoD, at the request of the Italian authorities, promptly provided assistance to the Italian people at the height of the epidemic. However, not a single source mentions the activities of NAMRU-3 to protect Italian citizens, although the level of equipment of the facility allowed and allows for the full range of research with the new coronavirus agent. Clearly, the redeployment of NAMRU-3 under the pretext of providing assistance was not intended to protect Italians, and the role of the biolab in the spread of COVID-19 has yet to be assessed. No wonder that the decision by the Pesaro city authorities to construct a national biolaboratory sparked a wave of local protests and widespread pleas to state authorities given the deployment of a U.S. military biological facility in Italy.

U.S. military bioactivity in Asia

The number of biolaboratories in the United States with the highest possible BSL-3-plus and BSL-4 containment levels has increased significantly over the past few years. According to a report by King’s College based in London, there are 25 active laboratories in the US and three under construction where research on highly dangerous viruses and bacteria is being conducted.

According to a report by King’s College based in London, 18 additional BSL-4 laboratories will be opened in the upcoming years, the most of which will be situated in Asian nations outside the legal jurisdiction of the USA.

There are concerns that these facilities will pose serious risks: they are located in densely populated areas, save on protective equipment, and lack effective biosafety regulations in the countries where they are based.

Work is scheduled to collect and genotype samples of the pathogens of three extremely hazardous illnesses indigenous to these regions—plague, anthrax, and tularaemia – under the cover of doing completely peaceful tasks in the states of Central Asia and Transcaucasia.

Multifaceted U.S. violations

In the post-Soviet region, the U.S. has already stepped up its military-biological activities. Pentagon contractors and civilian intermediates like the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Gryphon Scientific research company have taken the position of the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and Pentagon contractors.

The long-term planning document like the new U.S. DoD Biomanufacturing Strategy approved on 23 March 2023 was developed specifically by the US military department. The document defines the development of biotechnology and the search for its military applications. The claimed goal is to ensure technological sovereignty in the field of bioproduction and to outpace strategic rivals.

The amount of funding for activities within the framework of the approved strategic documents for the next five years will be about $90 billion. In addition, the U.S. intends to strengthen global control of the biological situation in the world and reserves the right to conduct ‘dual-use’ research, including outside the national territory.

It should be noted that the U.S. has never clearly stated its commitment to the safety of research carried out in biolaboratories under its control.

This is supported by a review of US National Institutes of Health documents that relate to safety violations. In the course of an investigation conducted by the Intersept independent company, more than five and a half thousand pages of incident reports were studied. It concluded that research carried out at universities in Washington, Minnesota, and Illinois led to in-lab contamination and created the risk of further spread of dangerous pathogens.

These statistics do not take into account incidents at military-biological facilities, a key one being the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick. However, the Institute has repeatedly been the subject of investigations by U.S. federal agencies because of its non-transparent and unsafe activities. In 2019, federal regulatory agencies banned work on dangerous pathogens at Fort Detrick due to poor efficacy of effluent disinfection systems and numerous safety violations, which took almost a year to fix.

According to an official statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, it was during this period that localized outbreaks of pneumonia of unknown origin were reported in several areas of the U.S.

Systematic breaches of security requirements at U.S. biolabs have raised justifiable concerns in the global community.

Earlier, the Russian Ministry of Defence reported on the Pentagon’s establishment of the Electronic Integrated Disease Surveillance System (EIDSS). Equipping bioweapons facilities on the territory of other countries with such systems provides the U.S. with an opportunity not only to ensure the security of its military contingents at their deployment sites, but also to remotely monitor the activities of biolaboratories outside national jurisdictions.

The surveillance system includes U.S. Army and Navy laboratories as well as verification points located at U.S. military bases in different regions of the world.

One of the areas of strategic development is the improvement of individual and group biosecurity methods for U.S. military personnel in different theatres of war. The goal is also to continue the study of area-endemic pathogens of particularly dangerous infectious diseases.

The Russian MoD shall keep tracking the operations of the agencies subordinate to the U.S. DoD that are involved in creating bioweapons in violation of the international BWC.

More info on illegal U.S. military bioactivity in Ukraine, involvement of DOE

From Strategic Stability

Report # 237
May 7, 2023

POWERPOINT

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) of the Russian Federation announced additional information dealt with the U.S. military biological activities in Ukraine and other regions of the world

The MoD presented updated materials that confirmed the U.S. involvement in dual-use of bioweapons lams in Ukraine.

One of the U.S. Defence Department’s (DoD) seventeen laboratories, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, worked directly in Ukraine as part of a project called ‘The Proliferation Security Initiative’. John Stephen Binkley, director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Scientific Research, made a statement dated 4 April 2022, where it has admitted that the Office would assist the Ukrainian side in restoring the curtailed dual-use research programs after the possible return of specialists. The presented document confirmed that one of the activities of the Department of Energy was the recruitment of specialists formerly working in Ukraine with experience and knowledge in the field of weapons of mass destruction.

A key figure in the US Department of Energy projects in Ukraine was ex-Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Professor Richard Weller. He supervised the implementation of Ukrainian projects to study diseases that can be transmitted from animals to humans, based at the Kiev Institute of Veterinary Medicine and the Institute of Experimental and Clinical Veterinary Medicine in Kharkov.

Russian MoD highlighted the close cooperation existing between the Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Defense. For example, the Department of Energy’s Pacific Laboratory is headed by Stephen Ashby, who is also serving as vice president of Battelle, the Pentagon’s main contractor.

The Ukrainian Science and Technology Centre (USTC) acted as an intermediary between the Department of Energy and Ukrainian research organizations.

The USTC and the International Science and Technology Centre (ISTC)’s responsibility to allocate the funds under the grant system. Ronald Lehman, Chairman of the organization’s Governing Board, is also Director of the Center for Global Security Studies at Livermore National Laboratory, which is also part of the United States Department of Energy. The Director of the Kiev office, Sawn Anderson, the U.S. Embassy’s energy Attaché, is in charge of organizing the department’s research activities in Ukraine. Thus, along with the Pentagon, the Department of Energy is a key organiser and customer of military-biological research in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world.

It should be noted that more than a dozen dual-use ‘P’-projects, such as (P-157, P-316, P-490, etc.) were organized with the direct involvement of the U.S. Department of Energy. As part of these projects, genetic variability in areas of radioactive contamination, the spread of tuberculosis, and other mycobacterial infections, as well as economically important animal diseases such as African swine fever and classical swine fever were studied.

In 2023 alone, the U.S. Department of Energy officially allocated $105 million for research in the Virtual Research Environment for Biohazard Preparedness project, which is supposed to study the specific epidemic spread of highly dangerous diseases.

So, there is the question: ‘What does the Department have to do with fighting against biological threats and implementing dual-use projects?’

The non-transparent nature of the DoE activities is underlined by the fact that it enjoys the exclusive right not to return unspent Fiscal Year allocations to the U.S. Treasury and to allocate them to unbudgeted future expenditures. A report from the U.S. Chamber of Accounts dated 25 July 2022 supports this fact.

This strategy permits limitless funding for U.S. military and biological programs without the need for new requests to the U.S. Congress.

As an American politician and potential U.S. presidential candidate Robert Kennedy mentioned that in the early 2000s, the Washington started allocating $2 billion a year to bioweapons development.

The Russian MoD has repeatedly highlighted the risks of the Pentagon’s military-biological programs to study the possibility of spreading economically significant infections through vectors, including migratory birds.

These worries are related to Ukraine’s particular geographic location, where more than 270 species of migratory birds pass through and act as natural reservoirs for harmful diseases including highly deadly influenza and other infectious diseases.

Directly for the benefit of the U.S. military through the Ukrainian Science and Technology Centre, Project P-444 was implemented, the main purpose of which was to monitor avian influenza in wild birds from the Azov-Black Sea region.

The project assessed the conditions under which transmission could become unmanageable, cause economic damage and pose risks to food security.

It should be recalled that over the previous three years, avian influenza has cost the Russian Federation more than RUB 4.5 billion in damage and killed more than 10 million domestic birds. In Europe, agricultural losses due to the disease amounted to about €3 billion.

It is estimated that, while avian influenza used to be a seasonal disease in the European region, outbreaks are now registered all year round.

In addition, the World Health Organization has regularly documented the interspecies transmission of highly pathogenic avian influenza with infectiousness and mortality of up to 50% in humans. This year alone, four such cases have been recorded in Chile, Cambodia, and China.

Such facts make Russia reconsider the possible consequences of UP-4 project, which implied Ukrainian highly contagious strain gathering, capable of overcoming interspecies natural barrier.

The Western media and so-called ‘Russian experts’, performing research on foreign grants, skeptically commented possible global biological threats of such a project. It has been claimed that such researches are not ‘dual-use’ and are ‘perfectly safe’. It was noted, I quote: ‘…the methods of Ukrainian scientists and their foreign colleagues are used by ornithologists around the world…’.

Efforts to evacuate and eliminate any results, as well as material gathering during the research, confirm the dual-use nature of the project. In addition to that, the project scientists have been pressured by the Security Service of Ukraine.

Last week, the Russian Ministry of Defence and Russian Federal Security Service, as well as Rosselkhoznadzor (Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance) conducted a research in the Falz-Fein Askania-Nova Biosphere Reserve (Kherson Region). A study of documents seized from the archive of the organization’s veterinary laboratory confirms that the Reserve’s staff sampled and transferred biological material from migratory birds abroad until 2022.

The research was led by Denis Muzyka, the Deputy Director for international cooperation at the Kharkov Institute of Experimental and Clinical Veterinary Medicine. Viktor Gavrilenko and Aleksandr Mezinov, two employees of the Biosphere Reserve gathered and passed over migrating birds’ biological material.

During the Biosphere Reserve’s veterinary laboratories inspection, gross violations of biological safety requirements have been detected. Work was carried out in unequipped rooms, collections were not safeguarded or monitored, and in some cases highly pathogenic biomaterial was even stored at the homes of their staff members.

The Reserve’s poultry population’s documented mass death in 2021, which experts believe was caused by an infectious disease. It cannot be ruled out that the overnight deaths were provoked by the experiments being carried out and a disregard for biosafety requirements.

At the same time, the hastily fled project participants after the liberation of the Kherson Region offered the remaining employees to take out or destroy research archives, especially documentation confirming the fact of mass livestock death for a reward.

Therefore, the primary goals of the research conducted in Askania-Nova were to gather and transfer strains of particularly risky and costly infections to the U.S. military, analyzed their potential effects on the local biological environment, and ascertain whether the chosen pathogens were capable of causing widespread human outbreaks (similar to the pandemic of a new Corona virus disease or COVID).

To achieve these goals, they ignored generally accepted biosafety standards and the requirements of basic international documents on the selection and transportation of pathogenic biomaterials.

The Pentagon’s moves to expand its military-biological presence in various regions of the world significantly increase the level of bio-threats.

However, given the scale of U.S. dual-use initiatives and the hazards to the world’s biological security they present, it is necessary to conduct a thorough international review of U.S. military and biological operations.

America’s $100-billion Germ Warfare Industry is a “Criminal Enterprise”, says author of U.S. Biowarfare Act

From World Politics, Human Rights and International Law
Francis A. Boyle
(
2021)

October 11, 2015 Interview and article by Sherwood Ross

The American legal authority who in 1989 drafted the law Congress enacted to comply with the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention says the U.S. today [October 11, 2015] is in flagrant violation of that Convention.

“Since Sept. 11, 2001, we have spent somewhere in the area of $100 billion” on offensive biological warfare, charges Professor Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois, Champaign. 

Boyle said an estimated 13,000 “death scientists” in 400 laboratories in the U.S. and abroad, are employed making new strains of offensive killer germs that will be resistant to vaccines. 

For example, Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka’s group at the University of Wisconsin has found a way to increase the toxicity of the flu virus by 200 times! Boyle says Kawaoka is “the same death scientist who resurrected the genocidal Spanish Flu virus for the Pentagon for offensive biowarfare purposes.”

As for fighting flu, the National Institutes of Health in 2006, a typical year, got only $120 million from Congress to fight flu, which kills an estimated 36,000 Americans annually.  By contrast, Congress gave NIH $1.76 billion for “biodefense,” even though the anthrax outbreak in 2001 killed just five persons.

“These distorted budgetary allocations,” (spending 15 times as much for germ warfare as for fighting flu) demonstrate that the priority here is not the promotion of the public health of American citizens but rather to further develop the U.S. offensive biowarfare industry that will someday ‘blowback’ upon the American people with a catastrophic pandemic,” Boyle said.

He went on to say the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency(CIA) are “ready, willing, and able to launch biowarfare when it suits their interests…They have a super-weapons-grade anthrax that they already used against us in October, 2001.”

Boyle here was referring to the anthrax pathogens mailed to two U.S. Senators (Tom Daschle, of South Dakota and Patrick Leahy, of Vermont) and others after 9/11 that were traced back to the Government’s biowarfare lab at Fort Detrick, Md.

Boyle’s remarks came in response to written questions from Sherwood Ross, a Miami, Fla.-based columnist. Asked if the recent outbreaks of Ebola in Sierra Leone and Liberia could be from U.S. Government-backed facilities, Boyle replied: 

“These Ebola vaccines were experimental U.S. biowarfare vaccines that were being tested out in West Africa. It was a result of testing out of the U.S. biowarfare vaccines at our lab in Kenema, Sierra Leone, that created the West African Ebola pandemic in the first place.” 

Boyle warned that the Galveston National Laboratory in Texas, a high-containment research lab, has been seeking for potential biowarfare agents in the wild in other parts of the world “in order to turn them into biological weapons.”

He said, “They should shut down Galveston as an ongoing criminal enterprise along the lines of the S.S. and the Gestapo — except that Galveston is far more dangerous to humanity than Hitler’s death squads ever were.” 

Boyle added, “American universities have a long history of willingly permitting their research agenda, researchers, institutes, and laboratories to be co-opted, corrupted, and perverted by the the Pentagon and the C.I.A. into death science. These include Wisconsin, North Carolina, Boston U., Harvard, M.I.T., Tulane, University of Chicago, and my own University of Illinois, as well as many others.”

(Sherwood Ross formerly reported for the Chicago Daily News and was a columnist for UPI (Magazines In Review) and Reuters (Workplace.)

BOYLE CHARGES U.S. GERM WARFARE PROGRAM IS “CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE”

Q. AND A. WITH FRANCIS A. BOYLE ON BIOWARFARE

Francis A. Boyle is a leading American professor, practitioner and advocate of international law. He was responsible for drafting the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 (BWATA), the American implementing legislation for the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. His BWATA was passed unanimously by both Houses of the United States Congress and signed into law by President George Bush Sr. The story is told in his book Biowarfare and Terrorism (Clarity Press: 2005). He served on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International USA (1988-1992), and represented Bosnia-Herzegovina at the World Court. Professor Boyle teaches international law at the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign. He holds a Doctor of Law Magna Cum Laude as well as a Ph.D. in Political Science, both from Harvard University.

Q: To get some idea of the magnitude of U.S. biological warfare research involving deadly diseases now going forward, the Federal government is said to be funding 400 laboratories globally. These labs purportedly are concocting new strains of lethal microbes for which there is no cure. Right off the bat, I’d like to ask you, “Is this a criminal enterprise whose dimensions are being concealed from the American public?” 

A: Of course it is! Since September 11, 2001, we have spent somewhere in the area approaching $100 billion on biological warfare. Effectively we now have an Offensive Biological Warfare Industry in this country that violates the Biological Weapons Convention and my Biological Weapons Anti-terrorism Act of 1989. We have reconstructed the Offensive Biological Warfare Industry that we had deployed in this county before its prohibition by the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972 that was described by Sy Hersh in his groundbreaking exposé of it in his book Chemical & Biological Warfare: America’s Hidden Arsenal (Bobbs-Merrill: 1968). Our putative adversaries around the world such as Russia and China have undoubtedly reached the same conclusions I have derived from the same open and public sources, and have responded in kind. So what the world now witnesses is an all-out offensive biological warfare arms race among the major military powers of the world: United States, Russia, Britain, France, China, Israel, inter alia. The Biological Weapons Convention has become the proverbial “mere scrap of paper.” But my BWATA still remains the law of the land in the United States with a penalty of life-in-prison for violators. That is why the self-styled “synthetic biologists” proposed to repeal my BWATA so that they can use Synthetic Biology to manufacture new classes of biological weapons more efficiently.

Q: Exactly what is biowarfare?

A: Biological warfare involves the use of living organisms for military purposes. Such weapons can be viral, bacterial, and fungal, among other forms, and can be spread over a large geographic terrain by wind, water, insect, animal, or human transmission. Toxins—living organisms such as fungi—are also used.

Q: Which are the most dangerous?

A: Today several U.S.G. labs are at work on Anthrax, Tularemia, Plague, Ebola, Botulism, and the genocidal Spanish Flu virus. 

Q: What do they do with these pathogens?

A: Using DNA genetic engineering, U.S. death scientists are concocting new strains of lethal microbes for which there are no cures. Bacteria, for example, can be made resistant to vaccines, made more virulent, easier to spread, and harder to eradicate. Right now U.S. death scientists are scouring the biosphere around the world to locate any bioagent in nature that they can exploit and pervert into offensive biowarfare purposes.

Q: USA Today has done some fine reporting on this subject. Among other things, their reporters have exposed massive incidents of lax security conditions at U.S.G. labs and university labs funded by U.S.G. What might the consequences be of this disregard for safety?

A: This is a biocatastrophe waiting to happen here in the United States. In fact it has already happened in West Africa with the Ebola pandemic there. It is only a matter of time before we have a similar pandemic at home here caused by U.S. biowarfare programs. In this regard you should watch the excellent award-winning documentary by Coen & Nadler entitled Anthrax-War (Transformer Films: 2009) in which I appear and served as a consultant on.

Q: Recently, 13 cases of plague were reported in Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, New Mexico, Oregon and Utah, resulting in three deaths. Could these deadly plague pathogens (infectious agents) have come from the U.S. government’s (U.S.G.) germ warfare labs? 

A: I suspect they might have. But proving it is another matter. Any time you see some mysterious and widespread outbreak of an exotic disease around the country, you have to factor into the analytical explanatory equation that it could be the result of some illegal U.S. biowarfare program.

Q: Is it a fact, as alleged, that the Anthrax pathogens mailed to two U.S. Senators and others after 9/11 trace back to the U.S.G. biowarfare lab at Ft. Detrick, Md.? You have written that Senators Daschle and Leahy, both Democrats, had opposed the Patriot Act, which gives U.S.G. unprecedented powers and abolishes Americans’ traditional personal liberties. If the Anthrax was sent by the Pentagon, was it to intimidate the Senators?

A: Yes! I have written about this in my book Biowarfare and Terrorism (Clarity Press: 2005). More recently my friend and colleague Professor Graeme MacQueen from McMaster University in Canada has also written about this in his book The 2001 Anthrax Deception (Clarity Press: 2014). You are free to read these two books, draw your own conclusions, and see if you agree with us. Over the years there are numerous interviews I have given on this matter that you can obtain by Googling my name and adding the word “anthrax” to their search engine. The twin purposes of these October 2001 anthrax attacks were (1) to scaremonger the American People and Congress into adopting the totalitarian and Orwellian USA Patriot Act and (2) to wage an offensive war of aggression against Iraq. As President George Bush Jr. proudly boasted: “Mission accomplished!” — on both counts.

Q: Recently, there have been outbreaks of Ebola in Sierra Leone and Liberia. You have raised the possibility that U.S.G. may be illegally experimenting with these diseases on citizens of those African nations. Could you please elaborate?

A: These Ebola vaccines were experimental U.S. biowarfare vaccines that were being tested out in West Africa. It was a result of testing out of the U.S. biowarfare vaccines at our lab in Kenema, Sierra Leone, that created the West African Ebola pandemic in the first place. I have given numerous interviews to support my conclusion here in more detail. These can be located by Googling my name and adding the word “Ebola” to their search engine.

Q: Is such germ warfare development work illegal under the BWC Treaty of 1972? (Dr. Boyle was the American attorney who wrote the implementing legislation for the U.S. that passed Congress without a single negative vote.)

A: Yes. The U.S. is a party to the 1972 Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention which bans “development, production, stockpiling and use of microbes or their poisonous products except in amounts necessary for protective and peaceful research…” Colonel David Huxsoll, Commander of the Army’s Medical Institute of Infectious Diseases, has admitted that offensive research is indistinguishable from defensive research. 

Q: Although Russia said it scrapped its germ warfare program after the Communists lost power in 1991, the U.S. budget for this purpose has increased. Are there any countries or terrorist groups that might realistically attack the U.S. with such weapons? One critic has said .U.S.G.’s biowarfare push resembles “a dog chasing its own tail.”

A: The truth of the matter is that the United States government has been pursuing the development of an offensive biowarfare program and industry since the Reagan administration and his Neoconservatives came to power in 1981. I set forth this earlier biowarfare documentation on Reagan and his Neo-Cons in my previous book The Future of International Law and American Foreign Policy (Transnational Publishers Inc.: 1989), Chapter 8, “The Legal Distortions Behind the Reagan Administration’s Chemical and Biological Warfare Buildup.” Interestingly enough, the Department of Defense itself reprinted my study as Current News: Special Edition: CHEMICAL WEAPONS, NO. 1586 (28 May 1987) and distributed it to thousands of high-level D.O.D. civilian and military officials all over the world.

Q: It sounds fantastic, I know, but scientists once paid by the U.S.G. to cure cancer are now being paid to develop deadlier strains of anthrax, dengue, Japanese encephalitis, tularemia, Q fever, and other dread diseases. Comment? 

A: On the relationship between cancer research and bioweapons you should have a look at the book by Dr. Len Horowitz, Emerging Viruses: AIDS and Ebola – Nature, Accident, or Intentional? (Tetrahedron Inc. 1996).

Q: You have written that Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka’s group at the University of Wisconsin has found a way to increase the toxicity of flu virus by 200 times. What is the purpose of this horrible-sounding research and why should U.W. support it?

A: This is the same U.S. death scientist who resurrected the genocidal Spanish Flu virus for the Pentagon for offensive biowarfare purposes. Like all U.S. universities, Bucky Badger U. gets a cut out of all research funds brought in from the outside. Here at Chief Illiniwak University they publicly admitted that they take 51 cents out of every research $1 Buck brought in from the outside and charge it off to “overhead.” At most American Universities today, money talks and principles walk. My Disalma Mater Harvard is no better, no worse, and no different.

Q: During the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war, the Reagan White House okayed the Pentagon’s sale of weapons-specific biological agents and poison gas to Iraq that Saddam Hussein used against Iran and his own Kurdish minority? At least 5,000 Kurds were gassed. And, according to Time magazine of Jan. 20, 2014, the CIA reckoned Iran suffered 50,000 deaths. Doesn’t this prove the White House has used biological agents offensively? 

A: Certainly chemical weapons were used illegally. In addition, the Reagan administration shipped weapons-specific biowarfare agents to Saddam Hussein in Iraq in the hope and expectation that he would weaponize them and use them against Iran. He did weaponize them. So far I have not seen evidence that he used bioweapons against Iran or the Kurds. But these biowarfare weapons that Saddam Hussein produced thanks to Reagan and his Neo-Cons did “blowback” upon U.S. armed forces when they invaded Iraq in 1991. This “blowback” played a causative role in the Gulf War Syndrome that afflicted U.S. soldiers who participated in Gulf War I under President Bush Sr. I discuss this in my book Destroying World Order (Clarity Press: 2004) and in the British TV documentary The Dirty War (1993) produced by and shown on Britain’s Independent Television Network TV4 that I consulted on and appear in.

Q: You have pointed out that the Galveston National Laboratory in Texas, a high-containment research lab, admits to seeking for potential biowarfare agents in the wild in other parts of the world “in order to turn them into biological weapons.”

A: Right! They should shut down Galveston as an ongoing criminal enterprise along the lines of the S.S. and the Gestapo — except that Galveston is far more dangerous to humanity than Hitler’s death squads ever were. They say their work with Ebola is for a vaccine, but the same technology can also be weaponized. Galveston is working to aerosolize Ebola just as Ft. Detrick worked to aerosolize Anthrax. Aerosolization of a biowarfare agent is always the tip-off to the development of a weapon to be delivered by air to human beings who will breathe it in. Ft. Detrick should be shut down as well because it too is an ongoing criminal enterprise.

Q: Besides Ft. Detrick and Galveston, are there any other biowarfare laboratories you believe should be closed?

A: All of them. Since 1981, the Pentagon has been gearing up to fight and “win” biological warfare without prior public knowledge and review. What’s more, American universities have a long history of willingly permitting their research agenda, researchers, institutes, and laboratories to be co-opted, corrupted, and perverted by the Pentagon and the C.I.A. into death science. These include Wisconsin, North Carolina, Boston U., Harvard, M.I.T., Tulane, University of Chicago, and my own University of Illinois as well as many others.

Q: Biological warfare development requires highly sophisticated technology and safe laboratories. No so-called “terrorist” group is known to possess anything like the requisite facilities. Besides America, what countries have operative biowarfare labs? 

A: U.S., U.K., Russia, France, China, Israel, for sure. There are several other countries that the U.S. has established satellite biowarfare labs in.

Q: Is there any published data on U.S.G.’s expenditures for biowarfare since 9/11? I assume it has taken off like other Pentagon outlays.

A: Yes, there are published figures on this in the open record. The last time I did a calculation from them the sum was approaching $100 billion. By comparison, in 2012 Dollars we spent $30 Billion on the Manhattan Project to develop the atom bombs that were then used to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You can see my book The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence (Clarity Press: 2002), Chapter 2, “The Lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” So that historical precedent and analogy is a pretty good indication that the U.S. Offensive Biowarfare Industry is intended for use on human beings somewhere. The momentum behind the money propels inexorably towards use of the weapons.

Q: Does the recent Pentagon mail-out of live anthrax virus to 86 laboratories here and to 7 nations abroad, bear out your prior criticism of U.S.G.’s careless handling of these pathogens?

A: Of course. But I don’t believe there was anything “careless” or “accidental” about any of this. The Pentagon knows exactly what they are doing. They are not “incompetent” at the Pentagon. This was deliberate. Just like the anthrax attacks of October 2001 were deliberate.

Q: You contend that the American pharmaceutical industry and the World Health Organization (WHO) are dumping dangerous vaccines in West Africa where the publics are already suffering from Ebola. Why would WHO get involved in this? Can you elaborate?

A: First, to make money. WHO is a front organization for BIG PHARMA. Second, to reduce the numbers of Black West Africans — genocide.

Q: It’s been estimated that 36,000 Americans are dying every year from flu. By contrast, only five Americans died from an Anthrax attack and that was back in 2001. Yet, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2006, a typical fiscal year, received only $120 million from Congress to fight flu but $1.76 billion for “biodefense”? 

A: Right! These distorted budgetary allocations demonstrate that the priority here is not the promotion of the Public Health of American citizens but rather to further develop the U.S. Offensive Biowarfare Industry that will someday “blowback” upon the American People with a catastrophic pandemic.

Q: Scientists who oppose the Pentagon’s activity insist that germ-warfare defense is clearly impractical; that every person would have to be vaccinated against every harmful biological agent. Since that likely is clearly impossible isn’t the only application of a defensive development in conjunction with offensive use?

A: We are currently stockpiling vaccines to immunize our Civilian and Military Leadership Elites for if and when they decide to wage offensive biowarfare. Pace the Constitution, “We the People of the United States” will have to fend for ourselves as best we can with our grossly underfunded and inadequate public health services that have been deliberately starved of money in order to feed the U.S. Offensive Biowarfare Industry Beast.

Q: Recently, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told a St. Louis audience of government employees, “You’re some of the nation’s most innovative and inventive physicists, chemists, and geneticists…molecular biologists,” etc. Yes, indeed. How many employees does the Pentagon now have in germ warfare work and how much is it costing the American people?

A: Overall I have read a figure that there about 13,000 death scientists in America today doing dirty biowarfare work who perversely call themselves “life scientists.” Doctor Mengele would be proud of them all! As Doctor Strangelove said: “Mein Fuhrer, I can walk!” Seventy years after World War II ended the Nazis have won.

Q: Given all of the above, does it appear conceivable to you the Pentagon is developing a massive germ warfare weapon as a means of intimidating the world? After all, it has positioned itself in about 900 bases around the globe from which it can, and does, strike using conventional weapons, and it has used illegal radioactive ammunition in its war against Iraq.

A: Of course. But not just intimidation. The Pentagon and the C.I.A. are ready, willing, and able to launch biowarfare when it suits their interests. They already attacked the American People and Congress and disabled our Republic with super-weapons-grade anthrax in October 2001. A fortiori they will do so again to foreign states and peoples when deemed convenient. Us too! They have a stockpile of that super-weapons-grade anthrax that they already used against us in October 2001.

Q: Thank you, Professor Francis Boyle.

A: Thanks so much for doing this interview.

Briefing by Russian MoD on depleted uranium ammunition

From Strategic Stability

Report # 219. Depleted uranium ammunition in Ukraine

March 25, 2023

From the briefing delivered by Chief of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops, Russian MoD, on March 24, 2023

On 21 March 2023, UK Minister of State for Defence Annabel Goldie announced in the House of the Lords of the British Parliament that Britain would transfer armour-piercing sub-caliber shells to Ukraine with depleted uranium (DU). “Alongside our granting of a squadron of Challenger 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine, we will be providing ammunition including armour piercing rounds which contain depleted uranium,” she announced.

The cynical nature of the statement made by the UK Minister of State for Defence is given by the fact that it was made almost on the eve of another anniversary of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, that started on 24 March 1999, when the alliance began its operation called “Merciful Angel”. The order to begin bombing coalition forces was given by NATO Secretary General Javier Solana, who said the operation was a ‘humanitarian one’.

Any armour-piercing sub-caliber ammunition is an artillery projectile with a core diameter smaller than the calibre of the gun, used for firing against tanks, armoured vehicles, usually at direct fire ranges. The DU is the trivial name for a metal that is based on over 90% U-238 isotopes and less than 1% U-235.

The use of DU in such ammunition is associated with its high density, which provides their high armour penetration capability. This effect is achieved by using the kinetic energy of the core itself, as well as its shell. When hitting the armour, the soft steel shell breaks and transmits its energy to the core, which penetrates the armour.

The tungsten alloys have similar characteristics, but tungsten-based ammunition is more expensive for manufacturing. DU ammunition production is much more common in countries that have uranium reserves, the technology to process it and use it in foreign territory, when there is no need to think about the environmental impact. The use of depleted uranium-based ammunition has no significant advantage over tungsten ammunition in contemporary military conflict.

In armed conflicts, the DU ammunition was used exclusively by NATO countries.

In particular, in 2003–2004, the US used such ammo in strikes on Iraqi cities: Amara, Baghdad, Basra, Karbala, Fallujah. In total, the United Nations estimates that the US used at least 300 tonnes of DU in Iraq.

As a result, the radiological conditions in Fallujah were far worse than those in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the U.S. bombing. This city is still being called the second Chernobyl.

It is to be reminded that the NATO forces used DU ammunition during bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999. In all, some 40,000 armour-piercing air-launched projectiles with over 15 tonnes of depleted uranium have been used in that country.

Because of exposure to depleted uranium ammunition, a mobile hot cloud of fine aerosolized uranium-238 and its oxides is generated, which can subsequently provoke the development of serious pathologies.

The radiation hazard from DU occurs when it enters any human and animal body in the form of radioactive dust.

Fluxes of alpha radiation from small uranium particles deposited in the upper and lower respiratory tract, lungs, and esophagus cause the development of malignant tumours. Accumulated in the kidneys, bones, and liver, uranium dust leads to internal organ changes.

Thus, according to the Iraqi government, in 2005 the cancer incidence in the country because of the use of DU rose from 40 to 1,600 cases per 100,000 people. In this regard, Baghdad filed a lawsuit to the International Court of Arbitration in Stockholm on 26 December 2020 against Washington, demanding compensation for the damage caused.

There has also been a 25% increase in cancer incidence in the countries of the former Yugoslavia.

The victims of the irresponsible policies of their own leadership have been the NATO soldiers who took part in the military campaigns in Iraq and Yugoslavia.

The Report of the Italian Chief Military Medical Inspector (2016) says that 4,095 servicemen of Italian Armed Forces deployed in the Balkans (1994-1999) and in Iraq (2003) where NATO forces used DU ammunition have subsequently been found to have malignant tumours of various types. In 8% of cases (330 people), diseases were fatal.

In addition, uranium remains in the soil for a long time and pose a risk of negative effects on people, animals, and crops.

In a report published in Geneva in 2002, a group of experts who carried out research under the auspices of the UN Environment Programme at the sites of the NATO strikes noted: ‘The experts were surprised by the fact that more than two years after the bombings, particles of depleted uranium were still present in the air’.

Moreover, the head of the expert team noted: ‘Uranium bomb fragments were found in Serbia in Plackovica area, which is not marked on the bombing map presented earlier to the UN by the NATO’. The mystery of uranium contamination in Plackovica remains unsolved.

The level of contamination of soil and groundwater in these areas over a long period requires continuous monitoring to assess potential risks.

There are documents confirming NATO countries’ awareness of the danger of the effects of this type of ammunition on the troops, civilian population, and environment of the territories. For example, the Summary Report of the U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute to Congress in 1994, entitled Health and Environmental Consequences of Depleted Uranium Use by the U.S. Army, states: ‘No technology exists for reducing the toxicity of depleted uranium… The cleanup of depleted uranium ammunition areas is extremely difficult’.

In addition, the report by the UK Royal Society in 2001, The health hazards of depleted uranium munitions, noted: ‘The main type of cancer for those affected by depleted uranium munitions is lung cancer’.

The West is well aware of the negative consequences of the use of DU ammunition. Despite the fact that the use of such ammunition will cause irreparable damage to the health of AFU soldiers and civilians, NATO countries, particularly the UK, have expressed their readiness to supply this type of weapon to the Kiev regime.

Moreover, after the use of DU shells, large areas of crops on Ukrainian territory will be contaminated, and radioactive substances will be spread through vehicles to the rest of the territory.

In addition to the contamination of its own population, this would cause enormous economic damage to Ukraine’s agro-industrial complex, especially crop and livestock production, bringing down in the future any export of agricultural products from Ukraine for many decades, if not centuries.

Note: 1) see Report # 218, para 2 entitled “Depleted uranium (DU) anti-tank shells have already arrived to Ukraine”;

2) PPT slides to Report # 219

Also

https://www.rt.com/russia/573407-volodin-ukraine-depleted-uranium/
UK’s depleted uranium plan threatens all of Europe – Moscow

Russia-China visit and statements to the press

http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/70750
Press statements by President of Russia and President of China

From Strategic Stability

Report # 218. Russian-Chinese ties became much stronger in every domain, including in military sphere

March, 22, 2023

1. Chairman Xi Jinping visit to Moscow: major results

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese guest Xi Jinping have signed 14 joined documents on increased cooperation in fields ranging from trade and industry to science and the military. The two leaders also touched on the prospects for peace in Ukraine.

Russia and China signed the Joint Statement on Deepening the Russian-Chinese Comprehensive Partnership and Strategic Cooperation for a New Era, as well as the Joint Statement by the President of Russia and the President of China on the Plan to Promote the Key Elements of Russian-Chinese Economic Cooperation until 2030.

The parties expressed their intention to provide strong mutual support in defending each other’s core interests, above all sovereignty, territorial integrity, security and development.

The two sides have agreed to further develop of the comprehensive partnership and strategic interaction between Russia and China, and to deepen their cooperation on the international stage.

The sides reiterate that there can be no winners in a nuclear war, and it must never be fought.

All nuclear powers must not deploy nuclear weapons outside their national territories and must withdraw all nuclear weapons deployed abroad.

Russia and China expressed concern over the intensification of U.S. efforts to build a global missile defense system and deploy its elements in various regions of the world, combined with the buildup of high-precision non-nuclear weapons for disarming strikes and other strategic capabilities, as well as the U.S. desire to deploy land-based intermediate- and shorter-range missiles in the Asia-Pacific and European regions and to transfer them to its allies.

Russia and China oppose attempts by individual countries to turn outer space into an arena of armed confrontation and will oppose activities aimed at achieving military superiority and using it for military operations.

Moscow and Beijing agreed to “regularly conduct joint maritime and air patrols and joint exercises,” develop military exchange and cooperation using all available bilateral mechanisms, and increase mutual trust between their armed forces.

Despite the consequences of the pandemic and the sanctions pressure, trade reached a historic high of $185 billion in 2022. Both sides expect that Russian-Chinese trade will reach $200 billion by the end of 2023. Russian gas supplies to China climb up at least to 98 billion cubic metres by 2030, plus 100 million tonnes of LNG.

This is an example of how world powers, who are permanent members of the UN Security Council and have a special responsibility for maintaining stability and security on the planet, should interact,” Vladimir Putin said at the ceremonial dinner.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has praised Beijing’s 12-point peace roadmap for Ukraine, during a summit with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.

We believe that many of the provisions of the peace plan put forward by China are consonant with the Russian stance and can be taken as a foundation for a peaceful settlement when they are ready for it in the West and in Kiev. However, so far we have not observed such readiness on their part,” Putin stated. The document was released last February under the title “China Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis.”

The document was vehemently rejected by NATO countries and the Ukrainian government.

In its joint statement the two sides declared their specific stances on Ukraine: “The parties note that in order to resolve the Ukrainian crisis it is necessary to respect the legitimate security concerns of all countries and prevent the formation of bloc confrontation, to stop actions that contribute to further fomentation of the conflict. The parties emphasize that responsible dialogue is the best way for sustainable resolution of the Ukrainian crisis and the international community should support constructive efforts in this regard. The sides call for the cessation of all steps contributing to the escalation of tension and prolongation of hostilities, to avoid further degradation of the crisis up to its transition to an uncontrollable phase”.

Russian Foreign Ministry briefing on current situation in Ukraine and the West’s flow of armaments and ‘scorched earth’ tactics – March 23, 2023

Russian Foreign Ministry

Excerpt from
Briefing by Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, Moscow,

March 23, 2023

Ukraine crisis

Peaceful life is being established on the territories of the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions and the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, which were liberated from the neo-Nazi Kiev regime. Tens of thousands of specialists from other Russian regions are restoring and rebuilding residential blocks and civilian infrastructure and repairing hundreds of kilometres of roads.

On March 15, 2023, a technological complex of an asphalt concrete plant was installed, and a trial batch of road pavement was produced in the Lugutinsky District, LPR. This will make it possible to upgrade about 410 km of roads, 20 bridges and overpasses. In Mariupol, it is planned to repair 54 km of roads and five bridges, complete the restoration of the city centre, and build another 30 multi-storey buildings with 2,700 apartments in total this year. In Donetsk, a perinatal centre with modern equipment, designed for 149 beds, will open its doors by the end of 2023.

Time has shown that the Kiev authorities succeeded only in destruction. Russia returned to these territories forever (there is no doubt about this) and is actively restoring what was destroyed by the Ukrainian neo-Nazis. Naturally, they were not the only destroyers. They were actively assisted by those who created them and illegally brought them to power, first of all, the Anglo-Saxon duo of Washington and London. We will talk about this later today.

On March 18, 2023, President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky introduced another package of sanctions against 300 individuals and 141 legal entities. In addition to Russian nationals, the list includes citizens of Iran and Syria, including Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Restrictive measures were introduced against a number of Russian defence, aviation, shipbuilding and automotive enterprises, including the Kalashnikov and Almaz-Antey concerns, as well as several companies from Iran and the United Arab Emirates.

The Kiev regime has wilfully cranked up the adoption of anti-Russia sanctions. This is being done to keep their own agenda afloat, including in the West, and to continue doing what they do best, where they are truly unequalled – professional scrounging against the backdrop of the total destruction of everything that was created by generations before them.

There is no end to the collective West pumping weapons into the Kiev regime. On March 20, the Pentagon said the amount of US military assistance to Ukraine had exceeded $32.5 billion since the beginning of the special military operation. According to Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, nine NATO countries agreed to provide Kiev with more than 150 Leopard tanks to put together nine tank brigades.

The EU announced the allocation of funds to purchase more than 1 million rounds of ammunition for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The money – about $2 billion – will be taken from the European Peace Facility, as before.

On March 21 of this year, UK’s Minister of State at the Ministry of Defence Annabel Goldie made a few highly irresponsible statements. She announced that London would supply Ukraine with armour piercing rounds, which contain depleted uranium, alongside two Challenger-2 battle tanks. Her words were later confirmed at the official level in the UK. It was not a slip or another mistake. No, this was downright stupidity confirmed at the official level by the UK.

All the above is additional evidence of the aggressive intentions of the West, which does not need peace in Ukraine, in the region, or in the world. The West is obsessed with the manic idea of inflicting a “strategic defeat” on Russia and is ready to sacrifice an entire country, other nations, millions of lives for this. They would go to any length to have this fevered mind’s idea, the need to dominate and feel exceptional, confirmed through such destructive logic and its practical implementation.

The recent statement by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken proved this. Commenting on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow, he directly said a ceasefire in Ukraine was unacceptable. Let me remind you that the funding mechanism America’s satellites in Europe are using to send money to the Kiev regime is called the European Peace Facility. Antony Blinken does not believe there is a possibility of a ceasefire. How these things can coexist in one mind is completely incomprehensible. There can be only one answer – one of them is an overt and cynical lie. Which one? That’s obvious. It isn’t a “Peace Facility,” European or any other kind. That facility should have long been renamed a “War Facility.”  That would make more sense and deal with any inconsistency.

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov: Russian diplomacy in a changing world

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s article for Razvedchik (Intelligence officer) news magazine, March 24th, 2023

Russian diplomacy in a changing world

It is a privilege for me to submit this article to Razvedchik news magazine and share with its readers my understanding of the current international developments, as well as Russia’s foreign policy priorities.

We live at a time of historic geopolitical shifts. “The change of eras is a painful albeit natural and inevitable process. A future world arrangement is taking shape before our eyes,” President Vladimir Putin said.

Today, the emerging multipolarity constitutes a key trend in international affairs, as I have noted on multiple occasions. New centres of power in Eurasia, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America have achieved impressive results in various areas, guided by their commitment to self-reliance, state sovereignty, and their unique cultural and civilisational identities. They have an independent foreign policy, which prioritises their core national interests. This puts in place objective factors for the emergence of a new multipolar world order – a more resilient, just, and democratic framework reflecting the natural and inalienable right of every nation to determine its future, as well as choose its own internal and socioeconomic development models.

By the way, there are politicians in the West who are beginning to come to terms with this reality, even if reluctantly. For example, President of France Emmanuel Macron has talked about the end of the Western hegemony in international affairs on multiple occasions, even if, truth be told, all this happened before he joined the ranks of the pro-Ukrainian coalition engineered by Washington for countering Russia. It is a separate matter that a correct diagnosis may not necessarily translate into practice or reshape foreign policy thinking based on the principles of international law, equal and indivisible security. On the contrary, the US-led so-called collective West is doing everything to revive the unipolar model, which has run its course. They want to force the world to live in a Western-centric rules-based order that they invented themselves, while seeking to punish those who disagree with these rules, even if no one has ever seen them and they are nowhere to be found.

We never had any illusions as to who we are dealing with. It was clear to us that after the Cold War ended, Washington and its NATO satellites sought total hegemony and wanted to resolve their own development challenges at the expense of others. In the Euro-Atlantic, NATO’s aggressive eastward expansion became an integral part of this selfish policy, carried out despite the political promises that were given to the Soviet leadership not to expand NATO, as well as contrary to the commitments approved at the highest level within the OSCE to refrain from seeking to reinforce one’s security at the expense of security of other states.

The OSCE and Russia-NATO summits adopted multiple resolutions proclaiming that no single group of states or organisation can bear primary responsibility for maintaining peace and stability in the region, or to view any part of the region as its sphere of influence, but these documents have been trampled upon. All these years, NATO has been moving in an opposite direction.

For years, the West persisted in its efforts to penetrate the post-Soviet geopolitical space and to build the so-called axis of instability along the Russian border. The United States and NATO countries have always viewed Ukraine as one of the tools they could use against Russia. To complete the transformation of our neighbouring state into an anti-Russia, the Western spin doctors engineered and then supported an anti-constitutional government coup in Kiev back in February 2014. It was staged even though Germany, Poland and France acted as guarantors of a peaceful political settlement between the government and the opposition.

For eight years, the West not simply turned a blind eye to the genocide of people in Donbass but openly encouraged the Kiev regime’s preparations to use armed force to seize these territories. An illustration of this is the recent admission made by Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande, who have admitted that they only needed the Minsk Package to give Kiev time to build up its combat capabilities. One more signatory of that document, Petr Poroshenko, has made a similarly cynical admission. This is nothing other than evidence of hypocrisy of the Western political establishment and the Kiev regime it nurtured.

The Western politicians’ real objectives were manifested again in December 2021, when Washington and Brussels rejected Russia’s proposals on providing it security guarantees regarding the region to the west of Russia’s borders.

It is obvious that the situation in and around Ukraine is only an element of a large-scale collision created by a small group of Western states that wanted to maintain their global domination and to turn back the objective process of the rise of a multipolar architecture. Acting in the worst colonial traditions, the Americans and their lapdogs are trying to divide the world into “democracies” and “authoritarian regimes” or, in plain English, into the select few, who are exceptional, and everyone else, who must serve the interests of the “golden billion.” The ultimate essence of that cynical philosophy has been expressed by the EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, who said, “Europe is a garden. The rest of the world […] is a jungle.” It was a Freudian slip that exposed their real intentions.

It is not surprising that threats and blackmail have been used not only against Russia but also against many other states. A strategic goal of the systemic deterrence of China has been formulated, including as part of the so-called Indo-Pacific strategies. The malicious practice of interfering in the internal affairs of states, including the fraternal state of Belarus, has not stopped. The years-long trade and economic blockade of Cuba has not been lifted. There are many other examples of this kind. Overall, nobody is safe now from the United States and its satellites’ raiding and mobster-style attacks.

To ensure the adoption of an international agenda in their own interests, Washington and Brussels are trying to “privatise” international organisations and to make them serve their mercenary interests. Here are a few examples. The Technical Secretariat of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has been given attributive functions that are not within its scope, and the Council of Europe has been turned into an instrument of anti-Russia policy and, in fact, an appendage to NATO and the EU. The situation with the OSCE, which was created to conduct an honest European dialogue, is almost the same. This Vienna-based organisation has become a fringe agency where the West is accumulating filth and lies to drown the fundamental principles of the Helsinki Final Act.  It is obvious that the OSCE can no longer deal with serious issues of European security. The West continues its efforts to eliminate the remaining capabilities of the OSCE, in particular, by initiating an exclusive “European political community” that is closed to Russia and Belarus.

Today, our relations with the United States and the EU are at the lowest ebb since the end of bipolar confrontation. When the special military operation began, the West declared a total hybrid war against Russia. Its goal is to defeat us on the battlefield, destroy the Russian economy and undermine our internal political stability.

We have drawn the necessary conclusions from this. There will be no “business as usual” again. We will not knock on the closed door, let alone make unilateral concessions. If the West comes to its senses and offers a resumption of contacts, we will see what exactly they offer and will act based on Russia’s interests. Any hypothetical agreements with the West must be legally binding and must include a streamlined mechanism of their verification.

To tell the truth, we no longer have any illusions about converging with Europe, being accepted as part of the “common European home,” or creating a “common space” with the EU. All these declarations made in European capitals have turned out to be a myth and a false-flag operation. The latest developments have clearly shown that the ramified network of mutually beneficial trade, economic and investment ties between Russia and the EU were not a safety net. The EU did not think twice about sacrificing our energy cooperation, which was a pillar of their prosperity. We have seen that the European elites have no independence and always do whatever they are ordered to do in Washington, even if this results in direct damage to their own citizens. We take this reality into account in our foreign policy planning.

We continue to scrutinise the prospects and expediency of our membership in the international cooperation mechanisms where the West can manipulate the rules of procedure and secretariats to force these cooperation mechanisms to adopt the West’s mercenary agenda to the detriment of Russia’s priorities and equal interaction. In particular, we have withdrawn from the Council of Europe and several other agencies.

We are working with our reliable international partners to transition to foreign trade settlements in non-dollar and non-euro currencies and to create an infrastructure of interbank and other financial and economic ties that will not be controlled by the West.

If the West decides to abandon its Russophobic line and opt for equal cooperation with Russia, this will above all benefit them. However, we are realists who know that this scenario is improbable in the near future. Besides, it will take a great deal of effort to win back our trust. Washington and Brussels will have to work very hard to do it.

There are many partners in the world apart from the US and the EU. This is a global and multipolar world. The attempts to isolate Russia, build a fence around it and turn it into an outcast have failed. The global majority countries, where some 85 percent of the world’s population lives, are not willing to pull chestnuts out of the fire for their former colonial parent states. The international community no longer looks up to the West, which President Putin has aptly described as the “empire of lies” as the ultimate truth or the ideal of democracy, freedom and prosperity.

https://mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1859498/

Study: Uranium weapons being used in Ukraine have significantly increased Uranium levels in the air in the UK

From Research Gate

Christopher Busby

March 2023

Abstract

Data covering the period November 2017 to November 2022 was obtained from the Atomic Weapons Establishment, Aldermaston to find if there was an increase in Uranium associated with the Ukraine war. Results from 9 High Volume Air Samplers deployed onsite and offsite by AWE showed that there were significantly increased levels of Uranium in all 9 HVAS samplers beginning in February 2022 when the war began. The result has significant public health implications for the UK and Europe.

Background

Uranium weapons have been increasingly employed in battle action since their first use by the US and UK forces in the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Since then, they have been used in the Balkans in the late 1990s, then Kosovo in 2000, probably in Afghanistan in 2002 and then also in the 2nd Gulf War (GW2) in March and April 2003. On impact, uranium penetrators burn fiercely to give an aerosol of sub micron diameter oxide particles which are largely insoluble and remain in the environment for many years [1].

There is considerable public and scientific concern that these radioactive particles may remain suspended for long periods, or may become resuspended and are therefore available for inhalation by non-combatants at some distance from the point of impact.

Little research seems to have been carried out on the distance travelled by the uranium aerosols. The military maintain that the uranium remains near the point of impact, and the Royal Society report also states that the material does not travel more than some tens of metres. On the other hand, measurements of uranium in local populations in Kosovo some nine months after the use of uranium weapons tested positive for depleted uranium in urine and the United Nations (UNEP) found uranium particles in air filters in Bosnia and Kosovo some years after its use. The author visited both Kosovo in 2001 (with Nippon TV) and South Iraq in 2000 (with Al Jazeera), and measured DU residues in the environment using scintillation counting for beta and alpha radiation. Samples were taken in Kosovo and analysed in Wales to show the presence of DU particles precipitated from snow and present in puddles far from the impact points. Later, information on Uranium in air samplers deployed by the Atomic Weapons Establishment showed the presence of Uranium from the 2nd Gulf War in 2003 [2] in a study similar to the present one.

The question of the dispersion of uranium aerosols from battlefields is of significant legal interest, since if a radioactive weapon resulted in the general contamination of the public in the country of deployment or elsewhere, the weapon would be classifiable as one of indiscriminate effect…

researchgate(dot)net/publication/369170067_Uranium_weapons_being_employed_in_Ukraine_have_significantly_increased_Uranium_levels_in_the_air_in_the_UK