Ukrainian hit on Russian general sparks questions about motive
Conveniently eliminated
The recent assassination of a senior Russian general by the name of Igor Kirillov shocked many, especially those who were unwilling to credit Ukraine with the ability to carry out such an “audacious” operation, as mainstream media called it. The killing was undeniably the result of precise intelligence and high-level planning. Ukraine immediately took responsibility.
This was not the first assassination that Ukraine has claimed to have carried out, although there have not been many — others include a senior Russian missile scientist and a pro-Russia Ukrainian lawmaker. Just a day prior to Kirillov’s death, Ukraine’s Security Service named him as a suspect in a war crimes investigation, accusing him of having used banned chemical weapons in Ukraine.
By order of Kirillov, more than 4,800 cases of enemy use of chemical weapons have been recorded since the beginning of the full-scale war.
However, Ukraine had never mentioned Kirillov before in connection with alleged war crimes, prompting some to wonder whether the allegations were a cover for some other reason for wanting him removed from this world.
Hunting Hunter
Who was Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov? He headed the Russian Armed Forces’ Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defense Troops. He came to the notice of the United Nations in the past, not for alleged war crimes but rather due to his own initiative, when he tried (on three separate occasions) to persuade the UN to focus on what he said the United States was doing in Ukraine (and in other countries).
Kirillov claimed to have investigated Ukrainian biolabs. Here is a presentation he once made on the subject:
Kirillov also made more specific allegations, including the involvement of the president's son.
The Rosemont Seneca Investment Fund, headed by Hunter Biden, and the Soros Foundation are involved in financing biological laboratories in Ukraine.
Russian misinformation?
In March, 2022, Russia summoned the UN Security Council to a meeting at which it reiterated its accusations against the United States, insisting that it was funding not only research into biological agents but was specifically developing biological weapons based on spreading pathogens from bats to humans. Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, told diplomats that,
Experiments were being conducted to study this spread of dangerous diseases using active parasites such as lice and fleas.
Nebenzia stated that among the pathogens being weaponized were bubonic plague, anthrax, and cholera.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States’ ambassador to the UN, admitted that the US has helped Ukraine operate facilities that detect various diseases but denied any military purpose to the research, saying,
This is work that has been done proudly, clearly, and out in the open. This work has everything to do with protecting the health of people. It has absolutely nothing to do with biological weapons.
Russia was accused of “lying and spreading disinformation,” but did not back down; in fact, its Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, subsequently repeated Nebenzia’s claims.
It's the thought that counts
That biological laboratories exist in Ukraine where dangerous pathogens are studied is actually undisputed. The debate is over the ultimate purpose. The United States insists that Ukrainian scientists are engaging in important work on deadly diseases in order to prevent their spread. Russia insists that their intentions are malevolent.
Ukraine has at least three BSL-3 biolabs where pathogens that can be transmitted via aerosols are researched — diseases such as Marburg Virus, Ebola Virus, Bubonic Plague, and hantavirus. Its laboratory in Odessa is named the “Anti-Plague Research Institute” though it studies more than just bubonic plague. The US Department of Defense makes no secret of having funded it.
Another lab has, according to Ukrainian sources, “a permit to work with both bacteria and viruses of the first and second [most virulent] pathogenic groups” although it is not updated to BSL-3 level, which may mean that its safety protocols are substandard.
Another consideration is that while a Biological Weapons Convention exists, there is no verification protocol (along the lines of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors nuclear technology), so claims made about what goes in biolabs are unsubstantiated and there is no real way of knowing whether countries or companies are compliant with the Convention.
Nonetheless, the UN dismissed Russia’s allegations as baseless. Perhaps coincidentally, during the same month, the World Health Organization (WHO) advised Ukraine to eliminate the high-threat pathogens in its biolabs in case a Russian attack led to the escape of dangerous substances. The WHO has not provided any information on whether Ukraine took its advice, nor has it disclosed which pathogens it was concerned about.
The American biological empire
A year later, the Russian Foreign Ministry released a report on Ukrainian biolabs which concluded that the United States is active world-wide in the development of hostile biological agents. The US public health officials, Russia alleges, deliberately outsource much of their research into pathogens for a variety of reasons which it sums up as a “military biological occupation of the whole world.”
An important role in the implementation of this “biological” policy of the United States is played by biological facilities under its control in other countries. Washington is systematically building an extensive network of biological laboratories outside its national territory, which make it possible to conduct a wide range of military biological research in various regions of the world under the guise of biomedical projects.
Therefore, in fact, a “military biological occupation” of the whole world is taking place, which opens up unlimited access to information for Americans about the state of the medical, microbiological and biological infrastructure of host countries.
The report added that the US sees specific advantages in conducting research overseas, as it enables them to examine pathogens in their natural habitats, determine patterns of migration of the animals that carry them, and thus determine ways to deliberately spread disease as a method of warfare:
Territories of other countries are used by the U.S. Department of Defense as a testing ground for studying pathogens of infectious diseases in the climatic conditions of their habitat, observing their spread and mutation, and determining prospects for enhancing their damaging properties. Genetic factors influencing the resistance to them of people, animals, and plants of a particular geographic region are revealed...
Particular importance is attached to determining mechanisms of transmission of pathogens to humans by insects, mammals, wild birds and other animals, as well as identifying their migration routes ... [in order to facilitate] the likely injection of atypical diseases through third countries into the target territory.
Russia decries such practices (which it may be engaging in itself) as not only hostile but also fundamentally immoral:
The lack of international control over this kind of activity provides the United States with the opportunity to act in other countries, without restraining itself by norms of morality and law, principles of humanity, and ignoring public demands.
Ukraine out, Africa in
Another year passed, and now Russia is accusing the United States of conducting hostile biological warfare research in Africa.
Russian Major-General Aleksei Rtishchev, Deputy Chief of the Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Protection Troops of the Russian Armed Forces, recently delivered a briefing on this topic, stating that US scientists are engaging in gain-of-function research in many locations in Africa.
The US administration views the region as an unlimited natural reservoir of dangerous infectious agents and a testing ground for experimental medical drugs.
According to Sputnik, a Russian state-owned media group, the United States is operating in at least 18 countries in Africa, in a similar manner to the way the US previously operated in Georgia and Ukraine. Sputnik adds that the Gates Foundation and Clinton Foundation also sponsor biological-medical research in Africa, where they, they allege, they take advantage of the challenges the continent faces to assert influence:
Washington is deliberately exploiting the economic challenges faced by African nations in healthcare to organize research schemes...
Sputnik notes the dangers of such research into diseases such as Ebola, accusing the US public health authorities of irresponsible practices and of sparking epidemics:
In 2014, the United States illegally received Ebola virus samples exported from Sierra Leone...
Pathogens that fall into the Pentagon’s area of interest later emerge as a pandemic, with American pharmaceutical companies reaping the benefits.
Russia says: Stop the research (but will they?)
Russia concludes its report with a call to cease such risky operations:
In summary, the Biopharmaceutical Complex operates a large network of biolabs in Africa, where dangerous gain-of-function experiments are performed and novel drugs/injections are developed/tested. There must be an immediate and complete global moratorium on gain-of-function research, along with comprehensive investigations into the growing number of U.S. and international biolabs—including their funders—that may be conducting bioweapon research, to prevent another man-made pandemic.
Considering that Russia itself has a large number of biolabs including BSL-4 labs where the most dangerous pathogens known to man are studied, it appears unlikely that any country capable of such research will voluntarily cease engaging in it. And Hunter Biden, having already been pardoned for everything he has and might ever be accused of, can breathe still easier now that one of his most outspoken accusers is no longer among the living.
