Russia Targets Azerbaijan and Others with False Biological Weapons Claims


On May 7, Azerbaijan denied Russia’s claim that it hosts foreign-funded laboratories for biological weapons research, a propaganda claim that Russia has also targeted Ukraine.

The Azerbaijan State Security Service (SSB) flatly said that such laboratories have never operated in the country. The SSB statement came after Russia claimed it could face biological threats from lab leaks in countries on its southern borders.

On April 27, Nikolai Patrushev, Secretary of the Russian Security Council, said:

“After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States and its satellites deployed a network of bio-laboratories in the space of the former Soviet republics: in Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Armenia, where, under the pretext of scientific research , carry out biological-military activities”.

That is false.

Moscow has been making similar false claims for years and used the same false narrative to help defend its February 24 invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin combines biological weapons laboratories with legitimate biological research on infectious diseases and other threats to public health.

After Russia invaded Ukraine, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev was the first post-Soviet leader take a neutral stance on Russia’s war in Ukraine. Azerbaijan, along with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, have been delivering humanitarian aid to Ukraine, and Azerbaijan has also been sending fuel assistance to Ukrainian farmers to help prevent the collapse of Ukraine’s agricultural sector.

Azerbaijan is one of the countries that could help Europe about your dependency in Russian gas. On May 9, Minister of Energy of Azerbaijan Parviz Shahbazov told the World Utilities Congress in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, that his country plans to boost its exports to southern European countries and is already working to improve its infrastructure to increase natural gas supply to Europe.

On May 4, the EU proposed to ban imports of Russian oil and is seeking to ban imports of Russian gas, which could impose a more challenging step. Europe imported more 41 percent gas of Russia in 2019.

In a claim previously debunked by Polygraph.info, the Russian Defense Ministry suggested that the United States funded laboratories in Ukraine to manufacture bioagents targeting specific ethnic groups. these labs they were supposedly testing anthrax and African swine fever; Laboratories in Ukraine and Georgia had conducted experiments on bats as carriers of coronavirus, the conspiracy alleges.

Moscow claimed to have Ukrainian documents as evidence, and Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti published purported evidence that was not verified.

the interception reviewed the evidence from Moscow, reporting that 10 Russian biologists had risked public denunciation of Russian authorities for lying about the documents, which only concerned harmless pathogens and public health research.

One of the biologists, Yevgeny Levitin, said Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that the bacterial samples cited as evidence of bioweapons research could be found in any public health laboratory.

“Here comes a man, he takes a swab from his throat, the specialists do a culture and see what bad things develop there,” Levitin said. “Strains grown on the plate need to be compared to something. So there are samples in any normal laboratory dealing with epidemiology or even microbiology.”

“To store such strains, you don’t even need a special permit,” he said. “These pathogens are not subject to specially registered storage. You just need to fill out a special form to confirm that they exist. It is a common practice.”

In March, the Washington Post dated this line of Russian disinformation to the Soviet period. It picked up after Russian President Vladimir Putin came to power in 1999. The newspaper said the intention was to distract the Russian public from Moscow’s own biological programs.

In March, US State Department official Victoria Nuland told a Senate hearing that there were concerns that Russian troops might try to take control of biological research facilities in Ukraine.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the US created the Biological Threat Reduction Program in order to detect and reduce threats, not spread them, mainly in former Soviet states where biological and chemical weapons were produced and stored.

In March, the US Department of Defense issued a report on its “Biological Threat Reduction” program in Ukraine. That effort, the agency pointedly noted, has long had the goal of finding ways to eliminate or lessen biological threats.

“Ukraine uses laboratory improvements provided by the United States and other partners to support broader veterinary and public health goals, such as monitoring the spread of COVID-19, preparing for and controlling African swine fever, which helped Ukrainian farmers protect their herds from infectious diseases. diseases and protect the food supply in Ukraine,” the department says.

Polygraph.info and other fact-checkers have debunked similar false claims about biological weapons development at the Richard Lugar Center for Public Health Research in Tbilisi, Georgia. Those false claims were fueled by far-right pro-Kremlin groups, as well as Moscow.

According the Embassy of the United States in Azerbaijan, Defense Threat Reduction Office (DTRO) – BAKU “is responsible for all activities related to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) in Azerbaijan to include nuclear and biological counter-proliferation programs; weapons control inspections, training and exercises.

On May 9, US State Department spokesman Ned Price. He called the allegations of secret Pentagon-sponsored weapons labs in Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan “lies”.



Reference-www.polygraph.info

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