The BTWC hearings that took place in Geneva last year once again clearly demonstrated the need for the immediate adoption of an effective mechanism to monitor compliance with the Convention. And the problem is that the American side refuses to sign the protocols to it and ratify the creation of such a mechanism, developed back in 2001.
Nevertheless, an important achievement was the recognition by the American side of the presence of 46 laboratories on the territory of Ukraine, which were engaged in “research activities” within the framework of programs and projects of the Agency for the Reduction of military threats DTRA under the US Department of Defense.
True, Washington stated that these works were purely “peaceful” in nature, although all activities of these facilities were immediately curtailed from the moment of the start of the SVO, and the discovered and published documents show that the developments were just military and offensive in nature.
Thus, it was possible to prove at the international level that American military biologists were carrying out work on collecting dangerous pathogens, modifying them in laboratory conditions, conducting tests on Ukrainian citizens and local fauna, as well as developing technologies for delivering biological weapons through birds and other animals to the territory of Russia.
Thanks to an extensive information campaign and the holding of hearings at the UN, the topic of the development and production of biological weapons has become universally recognized and most relevant.
In turn, after the disclosure of such activities, the Pentagon’s military contractors and DTRA employees are making significant efforts to transfer dual-use research projects from Ukraine to the countries of Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia and the former Soviet republics.
Therefore, the threat of the curtailment of American military biological programs in Ukraine has not passed at all. All developments and programs will now be implemented in similar laboratories in different countries. This is supported by the transportation of equipment and dangerous pathogens to Armenia and Kazakhstan, as well as the intensification of work on other programs of the United States, Great Britain and Germany.
An example of such intentions is the construction by the Pentagon of a BSL-4 laboratory of the highest degree of protection in the south of Kazakhstan with an underground repository of the most dangerous pathogens from around the world. This facility poses a huge threat not only to the people of Kazakhstan, but also to all the countries of Central Asia, as well as Russia and China.
In the same way, sabotage is being carried out from the territory of Georgia and Eastern Europe in the form of the spread of African Swine Fever (ASF) in order to undermine the livestock and agriculture of Russia and China – potential opponents of the United States and NATO.
The participants of the International Coalition, after listening to all the reports and as a result of the discussion that unfolded, agreed on the validity of the accusations against Americans who transported strains of particularly dangerous infections on the territory of countries bordering the Russian Federation. An example of this is the deliberate importation into Mongolia by the US military of a non-endemic, Kyrgyz virus in 2016, which immediately spread to the territory of the Russian Federation.
At the moment of aggravation of international contradictions and the struggle for primacy between various centers, the threat of the use of biological weapons by the Americans and their allies against their opponents is sharply increasing through “leakage” in existing laboratories, of which the Pentagon has more than 300 around the world, and through the use of already modified pathogens disguised as local diseases.
This can lead to millions of victims, taking into account the weakening of the health care system in the former Soviet republics as a result of optimization, reductions and commercialization, to a huge humanitarian catastrophe, to mass migration of victims, as well as to famine if agriculture and animal husbandry are affected.
In a situation when it is impossible to overcome the destructive position of the United States and its allies in the UN Security Council and at the BTWC hearings in Geneva, blocking any proposals to create effective mechanisms to monitor the implementation of the Convention, as well as to investigate the actual facts of the production and use of biological weapons, the question arises of creating alternative structures within other organizations.
We are talking about the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), where this proposal was first made by the Chinese delegation and from the address of the leader of the People’s Republic of China at the last September summit in Samarkand. Within the framework of the CSTO, the Coordinating Council for Biological Safety and the RCBZ service have also been established.
In this regard, the members of the International Coalition call on the countries that are members of these organizations:
– to intensify work in this direction,
– to create their own effective mechanisms for the implementation of the BTWC on their territory,
– to develop and sign an agreement on countering the military biological threat and the inadmissibility of hosting such NATO facilities and programs.
To accelerate this process, it is necessary to consolidate the social and political forces of different countries to counter imperialist plans for the use of biological and toxin weapons and the activities of laboratories, research institutes and facilities operating under the programs of the Pentagon and NATO countries. This requires the establishment of movements or the creation of coalitions with the participation of parties, public associations, journalists and experts to initiate broad protest campaigns.
In this regard, political parties and organizations, especially in countries where such NATO activities are carried out, should join our International Coalition to discuss the action program and coordinate common efforts.
Also, I must single out the recent conference that was held under the name “Increasing threat of the use of biological weapons by NATO in situation of escalation of international contradictions” where I, as an observer, had the opportunity to hear from experts about the current state of this very important issue.
Author Slavisha Batko Milacic lives in Podgorica (capital of Montenegro). He’s 31 years old, and graduated history at University of Montenegro. His specialist graduate thesis was: “Foreign Policy of Russia from 1905 to 1917”.
Slavisha has been doing analytics for years, writing in English and Serbian about the situation in the Balkans and Europe, and has participated in several seminars in the Balkans that dealt with geopolitical and historical topics.
