Why does Russia now believe that Covid-19 was a US-created bioweapon?
Why does Russia now believe that Covid-19 was a US-created bioweapon?
Evidence released from secret biolabs in Ukraine reveals the deeper secret of imperialist attempts to create targeted biological weapons.
Western mainstream media reporting of chemical, biological and genetic experimentation, ābiosecurityā and bioweapons has become so integral to the information war that it has become hard to disentangle fact from fiction, and truth from psychological operation, even for those with sound political instincts and a healthy scepticism.
Yet the war in Ukraine is shedding some remarkable light on the global network of dual-use biological laboratories that the US state, and its military-medical research-pharmaceutical axis, has been building and operating.
When the many sources of evidence are collated ā ranging from data found on Hunter Bidenās laptop to attacks on Latin-American crops, livestock, economies and national leaders, to the US-Ukrainian labs that have fallen into Russian hands during its special military operation ā the systematic nature and remarkably sinister aims of the US biological programme are strikingly revealed.
Weaponising the Covid-19 pandemic ā information and experimentation
As the Covid pandemic unfolded, there were multiple accusations and counteraccusations regarding the origins of the virus: Covid was a bioweapon released deliberately by China, we were told. Or it was a consequence of natural transfection due to the unnatural proclivity of the Chinese to visit farmersā markets.
Or, there had been a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where experimentation into coronaviruses, including āgain-of-functionā research, is carried out ā interestingly part-funded by the US company āEcoHealth Allianceā, which pursues such research, together with the US military and pharmaceutical companies, at multiple sites around the world, as we shall see later.
Weaponising the Covid pandemic as part of a broader anti-China propaganda war; this trope was carried worldwide by the western media and intelligence agencies.
The Chinese quite diplomatically but firmly pushed back against this propaganda, with US president Donald Trump in turn threatening to cancel Chinese treasury bonds ā that is the $1.1tn of the USAās $28tn national debt then held by China. (Was the Covid theory about a Wuhan lab leak right all along? by Jonathan Calvert, The Times, 4 March 2023)
The World Health Organisation (WHO) did not support this narrative and was promptly defunded by the USA.
In the context of escalating trade and military conflict with Russia and China, the narrative of the Wuhan lab leak is receiving another big push ā although evidence of Chinese culpability is conspicuously absent from the web of assertions.
But gain-of-function research (enhancing transmissibility, virus replication, virulence, host range, immune evasion or drug and vaccine resistance) is quite clearly going on, and the prime movers behind this research are the Nato countries, and particularly the USA.
Weaponising pathogens, to be released in strategic locations as part of a multidimensional or āhybridā war on any nation that steps out of line with the hegemonic aims of Anglo-American imperialism and its allied and servant network of states, underscores this strategy.
Biological warfare and imperialism
Biological agents have been used in warfare for centuries. During the 14th century, Mongol armies catapulted the infected corpses of plague victims over the walls of the besieged city of Caffa, in what is now Fedosia, in the Crimea, to try to force the surrender of the cityās inhabitants.
But with the advent of modern capitalist imperialism, the wider extension and more intense nature of systems of exploitation extending over continents, combined with advancing scientific knowledge have increased the frequency and potency of their use.
Whatās more, there are numerous post-WW2 examples of US and British state experimentation on the prison population, the military, and even on their own civilian populations to study the spread of pathogens.
If British and US workers were considered fit subjects for death-by-biological-weapons testing, one need only call to mind the colonial racism and arrogance of the British Raj and of the US elite to realise the contempt in which the imperialists hold the lives of their colonial subjects. It is thus quite easy to appreciate the penchant of these supremacist sociopaths for experimentation upon the subject peoples, with the aim of maintaining their rule and the source of their vast superprofits.
āBiosecurityā, research and biological warfare
In February 2022, during the first weeks of the Russian intervention against the US-installed fascist junta in Ukraine, the Russian government and military highlighted their findings that the USA had been operating some 26 biolabs in Ukraine. The information they supplied was initially dismissed by Nato politicians and the western mainstream press as āRussian subterfugeā. (Russia plans āvery graphicā fake video as pretext for Ukraine invasion, US claims by Julian Borger, The Guardian, 3 February 2023)
āThe Russian army has obtained documentary evidence confirming the Pentagon was involved in financing military-biological projects in Ukraine, the chief of Russiaās radiation, chemical and biological protection force, Igor Kirillov, has said.
āāWe believe that components of biological weapons were being created in Ukraine,ā Kirillov said. He demonstrated a document dated 6 March 2015 confirming āthe Pentagonās direct involvement in financing military biological experiments in Ukraineā.
āHe stressed that it was standard practice to fund US sanitary and epidemiological wellbeing projects in third countries, including those in Africa and Asia, through national health service agencies.ā (Russian military has documentary evidence US funded bioexperiments in Ukraine , 17 March 2022)
Hunter Bidenās role shows direct links to the US president
Moreover, these claims were substantiated by leaked emails from the laptop of Hunter Biden (US president Joe Bidenās son), and even admitted to by some mainstream papers.
The Daily Mail, for example, noted that āthe commander of the Russian nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces claimed there was a āscheme of interaction between US government agencies and Ukrainian biological objectsā and pointed to the āfinancing of such activities by structures close to the current US leadership, in particular the investment fund Rosemont Seneca, which is headed by Hunter Bidenā ā¦
āEmails from Hunterās abandoned laptop show he helped secure millions of dollars of funding for Metabiota, a Department of Defence contractor specialising in research on pandemic-causing diseases that could be used as bioweapons ā¦
āAnd although Metabiota is ostensibly a medical data company, its vice-president emailed Hunter in 2014 describing how they could āassert Ukraineās cultural and economic independence from Russiaā ā an unusual goal for a biotech firm.ā (Hunter Biden DID help secure millions in funding for US contractor in Ukraine by Josh Boswell, 25 March 2022)
Igor Kirillov also drew attention to the Bidensā connection to the bioweapons programme:
āāIncoming material allowed us to trace the interaction scheme between US government agencies and the Ukrainian biolab,ā Kirillov said, adding that the involvement in financing these activities by structures close to current US leadership, in particular Hunter Bidenās Rosemont Seneca investment fund, draws attention to itself ā¦
āāAt the same time, a close relationship has been established between the fund and key contractors of the US military, including Metabiota, which alongside Black & Veatch, is one of the main suppliers of equipment for Pentagon biolaboratories around the world,ā Kirillov added.ā (Hunter Bidenās investment fund linked to Ukrainian biolabs engaged in pathogen research: Russian defence ministry, Global Times, 25 March 2022)
BBC disinformation labelled āfact-checkingā
The imperialist press corps, with the BBC at the forefront, was cranked into gear to delegitimise such revelations ā or, in its own words, to āfact-checkā the accusations. It thus provided reams of articles and footage tailored to the carefully-crafted English consciousness, such as this:
āGeneral Igor Kirillov said documents uncovered by the Russian military in Ukraine on 24 February ā the day the Russian invasion started ā āshow that the ministry of health of Ukraine has set the task of completely destroying bioagents in laboratoriesā ā¦
āThe USA provides technical support and, according to the US embassy in Ukraine, āworks with partner countries to counter the threat of outbreaks (intentional, accidental or natural) of the worldās most dangerous infectious diseasesā.
āThere is no evidence that they work to produce biological weapons. In January, the USA said its programme does the opposite and in fact aims to āreduce the threat of biological weapons proliferationā ā¦
āThere have been similar unsubstantiated claims by Russia in the past about US-backed biolabs operating in its neighbouring countries.ā (Ukraine war: Fact-checking Russiaās biological weapons claims by Olga Robinson, 15 March 2022, our emphasis)
So donāt worry, these labs are just medical facilities. The USA is just one of many bodies that funds them, out of goodwill, to āmoderniseā the infrastructure and āimprove the healthā of the people of Ukraine and the world. And anyway, they are not run by the USA but are under the control of Ukraine (like the Ukrainian army, government, foreign and domestic policy generally?!)
All these claims (by such āunreliable sourcesā as the national governments of countries we donāt like, including Syria, Iran, China and Russia) are clearly to be dismissed when weighed against such CIA experts as our man at the University of Maryland, who has no bias!
Victoria Nulandās Freudian slip
Unfortunately, the minds of the Nato citizenry were further āmuddied upā on 8 March 2022, when Victoria Nuland weighed in on the matter.
She was responding to an apparently unscripted question from fellow neoconservative Marco Rubio in the US Senate, and independent journalist Glen Greenwald has given a powerful description of the exchange between these two bastions of the imperialist establishment and its portent:
āUndersecretary of state Victoria Nuland appeared before the Senate foreign relations committee. Senator Marco Rubio, hoping to debunk growing claims that there are chemical weapons labs in Ukraine, smugly asked Nuland:
āāDoes Ukraine have chemical or biological weapons?ā
āRubio undoubtedly expected a flat denial by Nuland, thus providing further āproofā that such speculation is dastardly Fake News emanating from the Kremlin, the CCP and QAnon.
āInstead, Nuland did something completely uncharacteristic for her, for neocons, and for senior US foreign policy officials: for some reason, she told a version of the truth.
āHer answer visibly stunned Rubio, who ā as soon as he realised the damage she was doing to the US messaging campaign by telling the truth ā interrupted her and demanded that she instead affirm that if a biological attack were to occur, everyone should be āa hundred percent sureā that it was Russia who did it. Grateful for the life raft, Nuland told Rubio he was right.
āBut Rubioās clean-up act came too late. When asked whether Ukraine possesses āchemical or biological weaponsā, Nuland did not deny this at all. She instead ā with palpable pen-twirling discomfort and in halting speech, a glaring contrast to her normally cocky style of speaking in obfuscatory state department officialese ā acknowledged:
āāUh, Ukraine has, uh, biological research facilities.ā Any hope to depict such āfacilitiesā as benign or banal was immediately destroyed by the warning she quickly added: āWe are now in fact quite concerned that Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to, uh, gain control of [those labs], so we are working with the Ukrainiahhhns [sic] on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approachā ā¦ [interruption by Senator Rubio].
āThe only reason to be āquite concernedā about these ābiological research facilitiesā falling into Russian hands is if they contain sophisticated materials that Russian scientists have not yet developed on their own and which could be used for nefarious purposes ā ie, either advanced biological weapons or dual-use āresearchā that has the potential to be weaponised.ā (Victoria Nuland: Ukraine has ābiological research facilitiesā, worried Russia may seize them, our emphasis)
Chinaās view
Zhao Lijian, spokesman for the foreign ministry of the Peopleās Republic of China, was asked during a press conference ā also on 8 March 2022 ā to comment on the Ukrainian biolabs. His statement was far more balanced than anything to be found in scores of articles on the subject in the British press:
āLately, US biological labs in Ukraine have indeed attracted much attention. According to reports, a large quantity of dangerous viruses are stored in these facilities. Russia has found during its military operations that the USA uses these facilities to conduct bio-military plans ā¦
āI would also like to stress that the biological-military activities of the USA in Ukraine are merely the tip of the iceberg. Using such pretexts as ācooperating to reduce biological safety risksā and āstrengthening global public healthā, the USA has 336 biological labs in 30 countries under its control. Three hundred and thirty-six, you heard me right. It also conducted many biological military activities at the Fort Detrick base at home.
āThis has led to deeper concern of the international community. Once again we urge the USA to give a full account of its biological-military activities at home and abroad and subject itself to multilateral verification.ā (Foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijianās regular press conference, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Peopleās Republic of China, 8 March 2022, our emphasis)
USA conducting Covid gain-of-function research in Ukraine ā and beyond
Recent evidence has come to light that before the influential paper published by the scientific journal Nature Medicine on 17 March 2022, titled āThe proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2ā ā which came out conclusively in support of the conclusion that Covid was a naturally occurring disease ā the authors themselves, all of whom were recipients of US NIH funding, were involved in conference calls and exchanges with Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser to the British government.
To an extent, this may be considered natural. But what was not made clear initially was that the majority of those involved in analysing the genomic sequence were themselves ambivalent in their opinions regarding the origins of the virus. Many considered the presence of a āfurin-cleavage siteā on the spike protein, which allowed the virus to bind to the AT-2 receptor in the human lung epithelium and enter the lung epithelial cells by phagocytosis, to be unusual.
On this basis, several of the researchers had thought this might indicate a lab-based origin.
The transition from this ambivalent opinion to a strong position favouring natural transfection may be linked to pressure from the US military and the careful guidance of Fauci ā or may simply be the natural evolution of those scientistsā opinions. (Evolution of a theory by Jimmy Tobias, The Intercept, 19 January 2023)
If strong evidence comes to light that Covid-19 is indeed manmade, or was the project of some gain-of-function experimentation, then the US military-industrial complex stands out as the most likely responsible party.
USA and Nato as the worldās foremost terrorist states
In the life-and-death struggle for the Nato imperialistsā survival, no holds are barred. The readiness of Britain to supply depleted-Uranium-coated shells, along with its main battle tanks, to the Ukrainian puppet junta is but one contemporaneous example of its genocidal recklessness.
These DU munitions are notorious for ceding radioactivity to the battlefield that lasts long after the military engagement itself. Incidence of foetal deformity and cancers were vastly elevated ā and then information about them was suppressed in western media and academic journals ā in Nato theatres of war such as Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Lawless protectorates the ideal venue for unethical research
The extensive network of US biolabs points to the larger goal: the control and domination of the biological environment as a means of war.
Many analysts rank cultured and genetically-engineered biological organisms as the most dangerous of all existing weapons technologies, with the potential for producing far more extensive and devastating effects on human populations than even fusion nuclear weapons.
In this context, it is useful to note the testimony of Amirbek Togusov, former deputy defence minister of Kazakhstan, who warned of the dangers of US bioweapons development:
āāWe are becoming experimental monkeys, and the unique territory [of former Soviet states in particular] is the Pentagonās natural testing ground for testing new viruses ā¦
āMajor-General Togusov planned to make a presentation at a conference on the threat posed by US military biolabs in Central Asia, but could not, having fallen ill with the coronavirus. Amirbek Togusov gave his colleagues the text of his research.
āOn 14 July 2020, the former deputy defence minister of Kazakhstan died from a coronavirus infection ā¦
āIn 2000, the Pentagon was forced to admit that the secret programme āProject-112ā conducted bioweapons tests in Egypt, Liberia, south Korea and Japan. The test sites were Puerto Rico and Hawaii.ā
āIn recent years, biotechnology has taken a step forward. Academician Aleksandr Spirin, in his article āBasic science and problems of biological safetyā, wrote:
āāThe decoding of the human genome and the recent advances in molecular and cell biology have led to the possibility of creating biological weapons of the third āpost-genomicā generation of the 21st century ā genetic and other molecular weapons as advanced biological warfare.ā
āToday, there is a technology for creating a virus with specified capabilities, ie, āmultipurposeā viruses with various functions ā¦ For example, selectively disable only the brain, organs of vision, digestion, reproduction, and so on. Development of genocidal biological weapons is underway.
āNow it is āpossibleā to target viruses only at carriers of distinctive genes ā ie, certain races or ethnic groups ā¦ā (Former deputy defence minister of Kazakhstan before his death warned about US bio-developments, Stalker Zone, 1 January 2022)
The special military operation in Ukraine
Russiaās SMO has unearthed ā literally ā evidence that āthe regime in Kiev had urgently eliminated traces of a US Department of Defence-funded military biological programme in Ukraine. Ukrainian laboratoriesā staffers testified that on 24 February 2022 pathogens of plague, anthrax, tularemia, cholera and other deadly diseases were urgently eliminated.ā (Biden must explain his sonās involvement in biolabs operation in Ukraine ā Duma speaker, Tass, 24 March 2022)
A further update from General Kirillov on 4 August 2022 covered a wide variety of suspect medical and biological science practices that have come to light as a direct result of the SMO:
āThe ministry of defence of the Russian Federation continues to analyse the military and biological activities of the USA and its allies in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world in the light of new information obtained in the liberated territories.
āWork continues on the study of biological samples from Ukrainian soldiers who have voluntarily laid down their arms. As we noted earlier, high concentrations of antibiotics were found in their blood, as well as immunological markers indicative of exposure to the renal syndrome and West Nile pathogens, which were being studied by the Pentagon as part of the Ukrainian UP-4 and UP-8 projects.ā (Briefing by the chief of nuclear, biological, and chemical protection troops of Russian armed forces Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov on analysis of documents relating to US military and biological activities, Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation)
Genotyping to āraciallyā target bioweapons
āWe have already informed you that more than 16,000 biological samples, including blood and serum samples, were taken from Ukraine to the USA, Georgia and European countries.
āAgainst the background of the US administrationās assurances that the genetic information obtained from Ukrainian citizens will be used āexclusively for peaceful purposesā, I would like to quote a statement by Jason Crow of the US House Intelligence Committee at the North American security conference in July.
āCrow warned Americans about the dangers of giving their DNA to private companies for testing because: āthere is a possibility that test results will be sold to third parties ā¦ and the information obtained could be used to develop biological weapons targeting specific groups ā¦ or individuals.āā (Ibid, our emphasis)
Increasing evidence that USA caused the Covid-19 pandemic
āIn May 2022, Jeffrey Sachs ā a leading expert in the respected medical journal The Lancet and professor at Columbia University, which is the leading academic institution for global biosecurity ā told a conference in Spain that āthe coronavirus was artificially created and is very likely to have been created using American advances in biotechnologyā.
āāAccording to our experts, this is evidenced by the uncharacteristic variability of the genovariants that cause different peaks in the incidence of coronaviruses, significant differences in lethality and contagiousness, uneven geographical distribution, and the unpredictable nature of the epidemic process as a whole. It appears that despite efforts to contain and isolate the disease, the pandemic is being artificially fuelled by the introduction of new variants of the virus in a particular region.
āāWe are considering the possibility that the US Agency for International Development (USAid) was involved in the emergence of the new coronavirus. Since 2009, the agency has funded the Predict programme, which has investigated new species of coronaviruses by capturing bats that carry the viruses. One of the contractors for the project was Metabiota, a company known for its military-biological activities in Ukraine.ā
āCharacteristically, in 2019 ā before the first Covid-19 cases appeared ā the US-based Johns Hopkins Institute hosted an exercise called āEvent-201ā, which practised dealing with an epidemic of a previously-unknown coronavirus, which, according to the legend of the exercise, was transmitted from bats to humans via an intermediate host, pigs. This is how the āSpanish fluā virus, which killed tens of millions of people, became pandemic.
āThe implementation of the Covid-19 scenario and USAidās emergency wind-down of the Predict programme in 2019 suggest the deliberate nature of the pandemic and US involvement in its emergence.ā (Ibid, our emphasis)
Inhumanity of the system
The USA, its secret state apparatus, its ruling-class neoconservative elite, and the ruling cliques of its Republican and Democratic parties cannot be regarded as honest brokers, any more than can their military-industrial complex personnel, think-tanks, foundations, investment companies and the monopoly capitalists whose interests they relentlessly pursue.
In the profound and lasting words of Vladimir Lenin: āImperialism seeks domination, not democracyā!
With the deepening global economic crisis of overproduction, the rise of China and the advent of Russiaās special military operation in Ukraine, the axis of global power is shifting away from the USA, and towards a multipolar world. It is precisely in these circumstances that the militarists are working themselves into a frenzy, trying to protect their parasitic āparadiseā.
The mounting evidence pointing at the dual-use nature of the US imperialistsā biological research, conducted at 336 biological labs in 30 countries under their control (and acting outside the jurisdiction of any state or regulatory mechanism, but under the close control and direction of the US financiers and their military-scientific-medical complex) and the connection of this research to outbreaks of viral and bacterial diseases ā possibly including Covid-19 itself ā as well as to attacks on crops, on economies and on āundesirableā political leaders and opponents of US imperialism is mounting.
This weight of evidence clearly underlines the unethical and inhuman nature of the exploitative system of capitalism, and the supremacist mindset of the imperialist ruling classes. We must exert all our efforts to dismantle this parasitic, decadent and moribund monopoly-capitalist order, as an urgent act in defence of the life and liberty of the working masses of all nations.
