Russia Pushes US Bio Weapons Claims

Russia has revisited accusations that Washington was violating international treaties on the prohibition of chemical and biological weapons, the latest in a series of unsubstantiated claims by Moscow of American military biological warfare.

Russian state media reported comments on Monday by the head of the country's nuclear, biological and chemical protection troops, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, accusing the U.S. of working with Moldova and Romania "to create biological agents capable of selectively affecting various ethnic groups of the population."

In a Russian defense ministry briefing, he alleged that biological materials such as human blood and tissue samples were sent from the Public Health Center of Ukraine to Western research laboratories associated with the Pentagon, RIA Novosti reported.

Kirillov said it was conducted through an elaborate scheme involving medical institutions, Western intermediaries and logistics firms linked to Moldovan President Maia Sandu, who has previously accused the Kremlin of a coup plot in her country.

"We have repeatedly noted that Washington retains a significant interest in obtaining biomaterials from citizens of Russia, Ukraine and other post-Soviet states," Kirillov said.

There is no independently verified evidence of Kirillov's claims. Newsweek has emailed the Pentagon and the Romanian and Moldovan foreign ministries for comment.

However, the claims have echoes of accusations made by Moscow at the start of Vladimir Putin's full-scale Ukraine invasion of skulduggery linked to biological weaponry.

Less than a month after the war started, the Russian defense ministry accused Ukrainian and American scientists of trying to hide a military-biological program involving plague, anthrax, tularemia and cholera.

The U.S. called the Russian accusations "laughable" and suggested Moscow may be using the claims to deflect its own plans to use a chemical or biological weapon.

On March 7, 2022, Kirillov said there had been a plot to send infected animals to Russia and that researchers had sent blood samples to labs in Australia to study "Slavic DNA," suggesting that there were plans for a biological weapon to only infect ethnic Russians.

The claims were amplified on the world stage by Russia's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, and its U.N. ambassador, Vasily Nebenzya and while dismissed as "utter nonsense" by the United Nations Security Council, a group of scientists publicly accused the Russian government of lying.

In April 2023, Kirillov had said that the U.S. had resumed activities as part of a military biological program in Ukraine, which was denied by Kyiv and Washington.

It is unclear why Kirillov has repeated these bioweapons claims but in reporting his comments, Kremlin-friendly newspaper Izvestia noted how Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov had expressed concerns on July 18 about U.S. military biological activities "near Russian borders, far beyond American territory."

A month earlier, Kirillov had said that the Russian Ministry of Defense had received evidence that a "U.S. military-biological presence on the African continent is increasing rapidly," warning countries in the region against such cooperation.

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