‘Russia’s sole purpose is lying’: US tears into the Kremlin claims the Pentagon is developing bio-weapons in Ukraine and trying to spread them with BATS – and says Putin will use chemical weapons for ‘assassinations’
- Russia brought it’s accusations that the U.S. was funding bioweapons research in Ukraine to the UN – claiming it relied on birds, bats, and fleas
- U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield accused Russia of ‘lying and spreading disinformation’
- She said Russia may be planning a false flag operation and would use chemical weapons for assassinations
- President Biden warned Russia would pay a ‘severe price’ if it used chemical weapons
- Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov once again placed blame for its ‘special military’ operation on Ukraine and the west
- ‘We feel in danger and we can’t close our eyes to it,’ he said, as Russia’s war on Ukraine entered its third week
- He accused Ukraine of ‘killing its people’
- Comes after Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov claimed Thursday Russia ‘didn’t attack Ukraine’
- ‘Putin is an aggressor. He is the aggressor. Putin must pay the price,’ countered President Joe Biden Friday
- Security Council will meet today at Russia’s request to discuss baseless claims
- Russia says the US is funding chemical and biological weapons in Ukraine
- Experts fear the accusations are a pretext for a chemical attack by Putin
Russia took its gaslighting to new heights at the United Nations Friday, as its ambassador accused the US of funding a biological weapons program in Ukraine using bats, birds, and fleas to spread deadly agents – and again denied attacking Ukraine.
Russia’s ambassador to the UN lobbed the accusations at a meeting of the UN Security Council – after the White House warned its claims, which the US and Ukraine vigorously deny, could be the start of a false flag operation meant to justify biological or chemical attacks the Russians may be planning against Ukraine.
The U.S. accused Russia of abusing the platform – it has a permanent seat on the UN Security Council – by ‘lying and spreading disinformation’ amid its brutal invasion of Ukraine.
Russia’s UN ambassador, Vasily Nebenzya, plowed through a range of accusations of alleged bioweapons programs.
The goal of one, he said, ‘is to study the possibility of spreading particularly dangerous and infections using migratory birds’ to spread the H5-N1 virus.
U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield accused Russia of ‘lying and spreading disinformation’ after its ambassador to the UN accused the US of funding bioweapons research inside Ukraine, which he said involved birds, bats and fleas. The U.S. warned it could be the start of a ‘false flag’ operation
‘There was another project where the vectors or potential agents of biological weapon, bats were considered amongst priority areas for study,’ he claimed. ‘They include the bacterial and viral pathogens that could spread from bats to people such as plague, leptospirosis, as well as … coronaviruses,’ he said, frequently waiving around sheets of paper during his presentation.
‘Experiments were being conducted to study this spread of dangerous diseases using ecto parasites such as lice and fleas,’ he said.
Taking a shot at another key U.S. ally, Nebenzya brought up biological experiments conducted by Imperial Japan during World War II.
The U.S. categorically denied such accusations when the Kremlin first started putting them out this week.
And at the White House, President Biden warned Friday Russia would pay a ‘severe price’ if it used chemical weapons.
The U.S. embassy in Ukraine says the Defense Department’s Biological Threat Reduction Program works with the Ukrainian Government ‘to consolidate and secure pathogens and toxins of security concern in Ukrainian government facilities, while allowing for peaceful research and vaccine development.’
Vasily Nebenzya, Russia’s ambassador to the UN, waived around paper as he plowed through a range of accusations of alleged U.S.-funded bioweapons programs in Ukraine. The goal of one, he said, ‘is to study the possibility of spreading particularly dangerous and infections using migratory birds’
Russia requested the Security Council meeting, after the U.S. rejected accusations that Ukraine is operating chemical and biological labs with U.S. support
This image taken from video provided by the Mariupol City Council shows the aftermath of Mariupol Hospital after an attack, in Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday March 9, 2022. A Russian attack severely damaged the children’s hospital and maternity ward in the besieged port city of Mariupol, Ukrainian officials said
‘We also work with our Ukrainian partners to ensure Ukraine can detect and report outbreaks caused by dangerous pathogens before they pose security or stability threats,’ according to the State Department.
The programs were established to help safeguard facilities after the fall of the Soviet Union.
U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield referenced a warning issued by Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the Security Council last month, when he predicted Russian President Vladimir Putin might “fabricate allegations about chemical or biological weapons to justify its own violent attacks against the Ukrainian people.”
‘The intent behind these lies seems clear, and is deeply troubling,’ she said. ‘We believe Russia could use chemical or biological agents for assassinations, as part of a staged or false-flag incident, or to support tactical military operations,’ said Thomas-Greenfield.
Russia made its accusations of ‘biological activities’ in Ukraine being funded by the U.S. without providing any evidence.
A collection of U.S. allies blasted the accusations.
Said Norway’s ambassador to the UN, Mona Juul: ‘Two weeks ago, the Russian Federation, in blatant violation of international law chose to wage an ultra-war against its peaceful neighbor, Ukraine. We redress our condemnation of this act of aggression.
And today, Russia has called for a meeting based on uncorroborated narrative insinuating that Ukraine is developing biological weapons. This impacts the credibility of this council. Let us not forget the real threat to international peace and security that we are witnessing – an illegal war waged by the Russian Federation against another sovereign UN member state.
‘Russia is sinking to new depths today, but the council must not get dragged down with it,’ said Britain’s ambassador to the UN Barbara Woodward. She called Moscow’s claims ‘utter nonsense.’
At the beginning of the third week of the invasion, Nebenzya claimed: ‘We did not start this war. We want to end it,’ while denying the attack on a maternity ward in Ukraine.
The U.S. imposed sanctions on Russia following the poisoning of opposition figure Alexy Navalny with a chemical nerve agent Novichok.
The Kremlin on Friday once again cast its invasion of Ukraine of feeling under threat by long-term western military positioning– even as its forces pummeled Ukrainian cities and Ukraine said Russia’s ferocious attack destroyed a school for disabled children.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who continues to refer to the war as a ‘special military operation,’ referenced Russia’s ‘concrete demands’ for security – after foreign ministers of Russia and Ukraine failed to agree on any kind of a cease fire during a Thursday meeting in Turkey.
‘We over the past eight years have repeatedly tried to ask our Western colleagues to put pressure on Kyiv – and to force Kyiv – to stop killing its people on Donbas and to fulfill the Minsk agreements,’ Peskov said, referencing the region where Russia recognized two independent republics as it kicked off its invasion last month.
‘Also, for the past several decades, our country has repeatedly raised how we feel in danger after you moved your military infrastructure in our direction. We don’t like it and we feel in danger and we can’t close our eyes to it: so why are you doing it? There were no answers,’ he said, placing the burden of the war on Ukraine.
‘Our country has repeatedly raised how we feel in danger after you moved your military infrastructure in our direction. We don’t like it and we feel in danger,’ Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov complained Friday
‘We need to find a resolution to these two questions. Russia formulated concrete demands to Ukraine to resolve those questions,’ Peskov told reporters.
Peskov repeated raised Russia’s concerns about what it says are the killing of civilians in eastern Ukraine, plus longstanding concerns about NATO enlargement eastwards.
‘Russia formulated concrete demands to Ukraine to resolve those questions. As far as we understand, those demands are being discussed by the Ukrainians with their advisers, primarily the United States and European Union countries,’ Peskov said.
‘Lets hope. That needs to be done. Then it will all end,’ he said.
His complaints came a day after a diplomatic effort, in the form of a meeting between the foreign ministers of Russia and Ukraine in Turkey, failed to result in a cease fire.
Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov even claimed Thursday Russia ‘didn’t attack Ukraine’ – with more two million refugees fleeing amid two weeks of Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered military attacks on Ukrainian cities.
Russian officials do not use the word ‘invasion’ and say Western media have failed to report on what they cast as the ‘genocide’ of Russian-speaking people in eastern Ukraine, although many of their own military attacks have come against Russian-speaking areas.
President Joe Biden, speaking at the White House Friday as he announced Russia would not longer be granted Permanent Normal Trade Relations status at the World Trade Organization, said bluntly: ‘Putin is an aggressor. He is the aggressor. Putin must pay the price.’
A senior State Department official told the Washington Post there are ‘few indications that the Russians are in any mood for serious diplomacy at the moment.’
It’s hard to offer an overture when the Kremlin’s position continue sto be that “we’ll continue to pummel Ukraine until and unless Ukraine changes its constitution … demilitarizes [and] denazifies,” whatever that means,’ said the official, referencing Peskov’s earlier comments.
Emergency authorities in the besieged Ukrainian city of Kharkiv said Friday that Russian forces destroyed a school for children with psychological disabilities in Izyum.
Russia has demanded a UN Security Council meeting to discuss its baseless claims the US is funding biological weapons in Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin’s propaganda machine has claimed Kyiv is planning to use chemical or man-made viruses against his invading forces including the extraordinary accusation that the West is preparing to spread viruses through birds.
The Security Council will meet today, despite the US mission to the UN warning: ‘This is exactly the kind of false flag effort we have warned Russia might initiate to justify a biological or chemical weapons attack.
‘We’re not going to let Russia gaslight the world or use the UN Security Council as a venue for promoting their disinformation.’
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claimed this week that Russia had uncovered communications between the US and Ukraine ‘looking for opportunities to develop [biological] weapons’ with funding from Washington.
Russia has demanded a UN Security Council meeting to discuss its baseless claims the US is funding biological weapons in Ukraine
The UN announced Thursday evening that the Security Council meeting will take place at 4pm GMT today (pictured earlier this week)
She claimed, without evidence, that orders had been given to staff of those labs to start destroying samples of viruses including ‘cholera and other pathogens’ on February 24 – conveniently linking it with the date of Putin’s order to attack.
The head of the Russian military’s radiation, chemical and biological protection troops, Igor Kirillov, doubled down on Thursday, saying that US-sponsored labs in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa were working on dangerous pathogens custom-designed to target Russians and other Slavs.
‘We can say with a high probability that one of the goals of the United States and its allies is the creation of bioagents capable to selectively infect various ethnic groups,’ Kirillov said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made a similar claim Thursday, alleging that U.S.-directed labs in Ukraine were working to ‘develop ethnically targeted biological weapons.’
The Russian Ministry of Defense also claimed that it had uncovered US and Ukrainian plans to spread flu with birds.
‘At least two species of migratory birds were identified, the routes of which pass mainly through Russia, and information on migration routes through the countries of Eastern Europe was also summarized,’ it said in a release.
The Kremlin has ratcheted up its disinformation campaign, with officials accusing the U.S. and Ukraine of developing weapons of mass destruction
China has backed Russia on the outlandish claims, repeating the Russian claim several times and calling for an investigation
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Russia’s first deputy UN ambassador Dmitry Polyansky followed up by requesting a meeting of the Security Council to discuss Russia’s apparent concerns.
The UN announced Thursday evening that the meeting will take place at 4pm GMT today.
UN disarmament chief Izumi Nakamitsu and UN political chief Rosemary DiCarlo are scheduled to brief the council.
China has backed Russia on the outlandish claims, repeating the Russian claim several times and calling for an investigation.
‘This Russian military operation has uncovered the secret of the US labs in Ukraine, and this is not something that can be dealt with in a perfunctory manner,’ ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said Thursday.
‘It is not something they can muddle through by saying that China’s statement and Russia’s finding are disinformation, and are absurd and ridiculous.’
China previously claimed the origins of Covid are in the US despite no evidence to support the wild theory, and plenty to suggest it came from their own shores.
Headlines like ‘Russia reveals evidence of US-funded bio-program in Ukraine’ and ‘China urges U.S. to disclose more details about biolabs in Ukraine’ have been run on China Global Television Network’s website.
The Communist Party’s Global Times newspaper published a story Thursday with the headline ‘US tries to refute `rumors’ about its biolabs in Ukraine, but can we believe it?’
A nearly three-minute video of a Russian Defense Ministry news conference repeating the allegations has been viewed more than 10 million times on Sina Weibo, a popular Chinese social media platform akin to Twitter, and liked more than 90,000 times.
Russia, China and the US are all signatories to international conventions against the use of chemical or biological weapons, but the international community has assessed that Russia has used chemical weapons in carrying out assassination attempts.
The World Health Organisation ‘said they are unaware of any activity on the part of the Ukrainian government which is inconsistent with its international treaty obligations, including on chemical weapons or biological weapons’, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
The US for months has warned about Russian ‘false flag’ operations to create a pretext for the invasion.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki issued a public warning Wednesday that Russia might use chemical or biological weapons against Ukraine, the neighbor it has invaded.
Psaki called Russia’s claim ‘preposterous’ and tweeted: ‘This is all an obvious ploy by Russia to try to justify its further premeditated, unprovoked, and unjustified attack on Ukraine.’
C.I.A. Director Bill Burns on Thursday told senators that the Russian playbook included sowing disinformation and using chemical weapons, amid warnings of a new brutal turn in Ukraine
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also denied Russia’s accusation that Ukraine is preparing to attack with chemical or biological weapons. Like Psaki, he said the accusation itself was a bad sign.
‘That worries me very much because we have often been convinced that if you want to know Russia’s plans, they are what Russia accuses others of,’ he said late Thursday in his nightly address to the nation.
‘I am a reasonable person. The president of a reasonable country and reasonable people. I am the father of two children,’ he said.
‘And no chemical or any other weapon of mass destruction has been developed on my land. The whole world knows this.’
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby on Wednesday called the Russian claim ‘a bunch of malarkey.’
Ukrainian forces have seized gas marks from Russian troops following warnings from the West that Vladimir Putin could use chemical weapons
Dalton said ‘Russia has a well-documented history of using chemical weapons and has long maintained a biological weapons program in violation of international law’ as well as ‘a track record of falsely accusing the West of the very violations that Russia itself is perpetrating.’
Dmitry Chumakov, another Russian deputy UN ambassador, repeated the accusation Wednesday, urging Western media to cover ‘the news about secret biological laboratories in Ukraine.’
The White House warning, and Dalton’s statement Thursday, suggested Russia might seek to create a pretense for further escalating the two-week-old conflict that has seen the Russian offensive slowed by stronger than expected Ukrainian defenders, but not stopped.
During the outbreak of the war, the UN was a fierce battleground for Russia, mostly standing alone in the face of horror at their actions.
A Security Council resolution condemning the invasion on February 25 went 11-1 against Moscow after China, the UAE and India abstained.
The US and its allies knew the resolution wouldn’t pass but argued it would highlight Russia’s international isolation.
Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations, Sergiy Kyslytsya, on Monday read out what he said were the final text messages from a Russian soldier to his mother – describing his horror at the unfolding war before he was killed
In an emergency session of the UN General Assembly, Ukraine’s ambassador to the UN also read out in what he said were the final text messages from a Russian soldier to his mother – describing his horror at the unfolding war before he was killed.
Ukraine’s representative, Sergiy Kyslytsya, made an impassioned plea for help, holding up a screenshot of the soldier’s texts.
‘Mom I’m no longer in Crimea,’ they began. ‘I’m not in training sessions.’
His mother asks: ‘Where are you then? Papa is asking whether I can send you a parcel.’
‘What kind of a parcel mama can you send me,’ he responds
‘What are you talking about? What happened?’
‘Mama, I’m in Ukraine,’ he responds, before describing the horror unfolding.
‘There is a real war raging here. I’m afraid. We are bombing all of the cities together, even targeting civilians.
‘We were told that they would welcome us and they are falling under our armored vehicles, throwing themselves under the wheels and not allowing us to pass.
‘They call us fascists. Mama. This is so hard.’
It comes as Ukrainian forces seized gas marks from Russian troops following warnings from the West that Putin could use chemical weapons, using his Ukrainian claims as a pretext for an attack.
The Ministry of Defence shared images of the captured equipment, which also included World War II era helmets and an ushanka hat, showing the dilapidated state of Putin’s run-down military.
The ministry said on Twitter: ‘The second army of the world is a sham. Equipment of ‘liberators’. They want us to live like that? #stoprussia.’
Sarin gas in Syria and Putin’s ‘poisoning’ of political enemies like Alexei Navalny: Russia’s dark and ‘well-documented’ ties to chemical weapons and the Soviet ‘bioweapon’ lab that’s sparked US fears
The White House raised fresh concerns on Wednesday that Russia could use biological weapons in a dramatic escalation of its invasion of Ukraine.
Press Secretary Jen Psaki condemned Kremlin accusations that the United States was building a bioweapons lab in Ukraine as ‘preposterous’ and pointed out that it was Russian President Vladimir Putin who had a history of using such horrific methods to take out his enemies.
Meanwhile, attention has turned to a Soviet-era research facility in Siberia that could be where Putin stores a terrifying ‘bioweapons arsenal.’ The State Department indicated last year that Russia is running a bioweapons program, though the Kremlin denied the allegation.
‘It’s Russia that has a long and well-documented track record of using chemical weapons, including in attempted assassinations and poisoning of Putin’s political enemies like Alexey Navalny,’ Psaki wrote on Twitter Wednesday. ‘It’s Russia that continues to support the Assad regime in Syria, which has repeatedly used chemical weapons. It’s Russia that has long maintained a biological weapons program in violation of international law.’
Putin previously shielded his ally, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, from a United Nations investigation into his use of chemical weapons on civilians in the country’s ongoing civil war.
Human Rights Watch found that at least 85 chemical weapons attacks occurred in Syria between 2013 and 2018, the majority of which they blamed on the Russian-backed Syrian government.
Both Moscow and Damascus have denied the government’s use of bioweapons even though Assad admitted to stockpiling them in a 2013 Fox interview.
On 2018 an apparent sarin gas attack in the city of Douma was reported to have killed an estimated 40 to 50 people.
Putin has previously given cover to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad when he was accused of using chemical weapons on his own people
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Russia could ‘possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine’ after the Kremlin accused the United States of building a bioweapons lab in Ukraine
Russian officials claimed after an ‘inspection’ of the site that the attack had been staged by Western governments.
The US State Department had accused Russia of working with Syria ‘to sanitize the locations of the suspected attacks and remove incriminating evidence of chemical weapons use.’
Putin has also been accused of using chemical weapons to carry out targeted attacks — such as those against Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny and former Russian intelligence agent Sergei Skripal.
Navalny, one of the autocrat’s highest-profile critics in recent years, fell ill on a domestic flight to Moscow in August 2020. He was taken to a Russian hospital after the plane made an emergency landing but was flown to Berlin for treatment two days later upon his wife’s insistence.
Labs in Germany, France and Sweden, and tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, detected that he was exposed to the Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent.
Navalny was arrested when he returned to Russia in January 2021 and has been incarcerated ever since, despite international calls for his release.
The Kremlin has repeatedly denied having a role in poisoning Navalny. Putin laughed off accusations he was responsible when asked at an event in December 2020, and suggested it was a ‘trick’ pulled to raise the opposition leader’s profile.
Navalny’s poisoning was not the first time Putin was tied to Novichok, however.
On March 4, 2018 former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal were found unconscious on a park bench in the city of Salisbury, England.
A witness told the BBC he saw Yulia on the park bench foaming at the mouth and her eyes ‘were wide open but completely white.’
Skripal was previously convicted of ‘high treason’ by a Russian court in 2006 for allegedly revealing the identities of Europe-based Russian agents to the UK’s MI6 intelligence agency.
British authorities identified the poisonous substance as Novichok and accused Russia of attempted murder. They claim Russian agents flew to England, applied the nerve agent to Skripal’s door handle and then left the country, according to the New York Times. The Kremlin has denied any involvement.
Former UK Prime Minister Theresa May said at the time, ‘Either this was a direct action by the Russian state against our country, or the Russian government lost control of its potentially catastrophically damaging nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of others.’
A Salisbury resident died in June of that year after applying perfume her boyfriend brought home a perfume bottle he found in the trash. Her boyfriend fell ill but survived. British law enforcement believes they succumbed to the same poison as the Skripals.
It appears Putin could have a whole stockpile of chemical weapons stored in what looks like a villain’s lair straight out of a James Bond film.
But this is the Soviet-era facility in Siberia where Vladimir Putin’s arsenal of bioweapons may be being housed today.
The State Centre for Research on Virology and Biotechnology in Novosibirsk Oblast is in possession of devastating diseases like smallpox and anthrax, as well as more recent killer pathogens like Ebola.
Opened during the height of the Cold War in 1974 as a bioterrorism research centre, it is still one of Russia’s most heavily guarded sites, fenced off with barbed-wire with armed soldiers permanently stationed at its gates.
The 70,000sqft centre is about the same size as a football pitch and is one of 100 research and administrative buildings in the facility, known in Russia as ‘Vector’.
It is one of just 59 maximum-security biolabs in the world, a status it shares with the Wuhan Institute of Virology — the site at the centre of the origins of the Covid pandemic.
The State Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology, known as Vector (pictured), released a statement saying a gas cylinder exploded on the fifth floor in 2019
Vector has clearance to handle the world’s deadliest pathogens and workers responsible for studying the viruses wear military green, full-body hazmat suits.
The secretive level four facility is nestled in the foothills of southwestern Siberia on the border of Kazakhstan, one of the harshest and most isolated places on earth, where temperatures can plunge to as low as -35C in winter.
Russia claims the lab, one of a dozen involved in the USSR’s manufacturing of bioweapons, shut down research into the weapons in 1992 after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Officially, the lab now focuses on developing vaccines for lethal viruses. Last year it launched research into prehistoric viruses found in paleolithic horses recovered from melted permafrost in Siberia.
But a US State Department report last year claimed Russia ‘maintains an offensive biological weapons program’ despite the country insisting it had ceased such research.
It comes after the US ambassador to the United Nations claimed that Putin could use bioweapons to overthrow the Ukrainian Government, warning ‘nothing is off the table’ for the Russian dictator.
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