WP: Secret Laboratory Under Construction Near Moscow
- 26.10.2024, 8:21
Russia may be producing bioweapons.
A comparison of satellite images shows that over the past two years, Russians have been actively building new facilities on the territory of a secret laboratory in the military town of Sergiev Posad-6 near Moscow. Several of the new buildings have signs of biological laboratories where work with dangerous pathogens is possible. This was reported by The Washington Post.
The publication's journalists compare satellite images of the territory of Sergiev Posad-6 over the past two years collected by Google Earth and commercial image processing companies MAXAR and Planet Labs. They show how construction equipment is reconstructing an old Soviet-era laboratory and starting construction of ten new buildings.
The images showed multiple signatures that, when combined, indicate a high-containment biological facility: dozens of rooftop air handling units, layouts consistent with partitioned labs, underground infrastructure, heightened security features and what appears to be a power plant.
In recent weeks, Russian officials have publicly confirmed that the scientists will use the labs to study deadly microbes such as the Ebola viruses, in an effort to strengthen the country’s defenses against bioterrorism as well as future pandemics. Under Centers for Disease Control guidelines, U.S. research on Ebola is restricted to laboratories rated as “biological safety level 4” (BSL-4), equipped to handle the most lethal and incurable kinds of viruses and bacteria.
The Russian Ministry of Defense did not respond to a request for comment.
Biolab near Moscow: danger compared to nuclear
There has been no sign biological weapons have been used in the Ukraine conflict, but the construction of new labs at Sergiev Posad-6 is being closely watched by U.S. intelligence agencies, stated in the article.
Andrew C. Weber, a former senior Pentagon official who spent years researching Soviet bioweapons facilities in the 1990s, said he was troubled by Moscow’s decision to build new research facilities in a highly secretive city known in the past for its role in bioweapons research.
“The upgrades are consistent with the historical role of this top-secret military biological facility in developing viral biological weapons,” Weber said.
Ukrainian Army General and former head of the Foreign Intelligence Service Mykola Malomuzh told Channel 24 that information about a biolab in Russia had surfaced before, and now we have confirmed it.
“Russia has never stopped developing nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. They call it the ‘global war triad.’ First it was the deterrence triad, and now it is the terror triad,” the general said.
The former intelligence officer believes that in Sergiev Posad-6, Russians are storing and producing biological weapons that can cause contagious and virtually incurable diseases in people. In his opinion, this will make it possible to spread epidemics that will threaten not only people, but also animals and plants, and may be more dangerous than nuclear warheads.