Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations

Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations

Remarks to the Press by First Deputy Permanent Representative Dmitry Polyanskiy on US military biological activities in Ukraine

Dmitry Polyanskiy: As you may know, earlier this month Russia hosted an Arria-formula meeting of the Security Council on the US military biological activities in regions across the globe. The briefers presented more factual evidence that is so undeniable and uncomfortable for our US colleagues that they, together with the UK delegation, decided to escape the conversation, which only aggravates our doubts and concerns. If you have nothing to hide, then you need not to be afraid to come clear on what you do.

Meanwhile, the evidence of military biological activities carried out on the territory of Ukraine in violation of BWC is piling up. We circulated today relevant new materials as an official document of the Security Council. We feel it our duty to keep wider UN audience updated on this as well.

As you all remember, previously we have presented evidence that the US coordinates the network of biological laboratories and research institutes in Ukraine. Our Ministry of Defense revealed that one of its key elements is the Ukrainian Science and Technology Centre (STCU), a non-governmental organization that seemingly has nothing to do with the Pentagon. But the documents discovered by our Ministry of Defense leave no doubt that the STCU's main activity is to act as a distribution center for grants for research in the interest of the Pentagon, including biological weapons research.

Washington has spent more than $350 million on STCU projects in recent years. The sponsors of the STCU are the Department of State and the Department of Defense as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, the US Departments of Agriculture, Health and Energy.

Our Ministry of Defense received the documentation prepared by the STCU curators, dated March 11, 2022, that sheds some lights on the true nature of the STCU activities. In particular, it admits that the Ukrainians who worked for the US-curated “research institutions” are experts in the development of biological, radiological, chemical and nuclear weapons and their means of delivery who had to relocate and now need “financial support”. It means that Washington actually acknowledges Ukrainian experts' work on the development of weapons of mass destruction as well as their means of delivery, and considers it appropriate to continue funding them.

Last time I have dropped to you some names of the US officials who were involved in the military biological programs in Ukraine. Let me add to this list more names.

The position of STCU executive director is held by Bjelajac Curtis Michael, a US citizen who has worked in Ukraine since 1994. The European Union chairman of the STCU board is Maier Eddie Arthur; the US chairman is Phil Dolliff, former State Department's Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Security and WMD Nonproliferation Programs.

Documents received by the Russian Ministry of Defense confirm STCU's ties to the US military Department. They include a formal recommendation from the US State Department endorsing the STCU's cooperation with the Pentagon's main contractor, Black & Veach. As shown by the correspondence, Matthew Webber, the company's vice president, expresses willingness to work with the STCU on ongoing military biological research in Ukraine.

Between 2014 and 2022, the Ukrainian Science and Technology Centre implemented five hundred R&D projects in post-Soviet space. The US supervisors were primarily interested in dual-use research.

I would like to draw your attention to Project 3007 "Monitoring of the epidemiological and environmental situation regarding hazardous diseases of aquatic origin in Ukraine". Ukrainian specialists, supervised by American scientists, regularly collected water samples in a number of major Ukrainian rivers, including the Dnepr, Danube and Dniester, as well as in the North Crimean Canal, to determine the presence of particularly dangerous pathogens, including cholera, typhoid, hepatitis A and E pathogens, and draw conclusions about their possible waterborne spread. The project assessed the ability of the selected samples to bring damage and deposited their strains in a collection and subsequently exported them to the USA. The natural question here is - for what purpose? Why would the US need a collection of dangerous pathogens that can spread in the Ukrainian rivers?

If you look at the map of Ukrainian water resources, you will see that the results of such “research” could be used to trigger a biological catastrophe not only in the Russian Federation, but also in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov regions, as well as in the Eastern Europe - Belarus, Moldova and Poland.

I would like to recall that concerns about Washington's military biological activities are aggravated by the fact that, contrary to its international obligations, the US has retained norms in its national legislation that allow for the military biological research.

When ratifying the 1925 Geneva Protocol, the United States made a number of reservations, one of which allows for the retaliatory use of chemical and toxin weapons.

Under the US Federal Unity and Cohesion Against Terrorism Act, research into biological weapons is permitted upon the approval of the US government. Participants in such research are not criminally liable for developing such weapons.

The US administration is implementing the principle that domestic law takes over international law in this area, while most ethically controversial research is conducted outside national jurisdictions.

There are horrible examples of that.

In the course of the special operation in Ukraine, it was established that US scientists from a laboratory in Merefa (Kharkov Region) had tested potentially dangerous biological drugs on patients of the regional clinical psychiatric hospital No 3 in Kharkov between 2019 and 2021.

Persons with mental disorders were selected for the experiments on the basis of their age, nationality and immune status. Special forms were used to record the results of 24-hour patient monitoring. The information was not included into the hospital database and the staff of the medical institution signed a non-disclosure agreement.

In January 2022, the laboratory in Merefa was shut down and all equipment and materials were moved to Western Ukraine.

There are a number of witnesses to these inhumane experiments, whose names we cannot disclose for the sake of their safety.

However, this is the illustration how the US in reality approaches the human rights issue and how it ranks the people in Ukraine lower than the US citizens turning them into guinea pigs in the Pentagon-led biological experiments.

Lastly, as you can recall, I mentioned before that Ukraine had sent a request to the manufacturing company regarding the possibility of equipping the Bayraktar drones with aerosol equipment.

On March 9, three unmanned aerial vehicles equipped with 30-litre containers and equipment for spraying formulations were detected by the Russian military forces in Kherson region. Also, in January 2022, Ukraine reportedly purchased through intermediaries more than 50 such devices, which can be used to apply biological formulations and toxic chemicals.

These are very alarming discoveries which confirm that risks of staged provocations with the use of biological and chemical substances by the Ukrainian regime and nationalists groups are very high. We urge the world to stay alert to this warning.

Our Ministry of Defense will continue to analyze the evidence of the US military biological activities on the territory of Ukraine and in wider scope. Stay tuned, we will keep you posted.

Q: Any comment on Secretary-General’s call for a four-day humanitarian pause or a ceasefire around the Orthodox Easter holiday?

A: It is much above my payroll to decide on such matters. They are considered in Moscow by our Ministry of Defense. Personally, I am a little bit skeptical. I know how it worked before. We declared those ceasefires and humanitarian corridors. Ukraine either did not use them or used them for some mean purposes, like staging some provocations (as was the case in Bucha), shelling civilians, and other criminal stuff. So I do not know what is the point of entering in this game with Ukrainians on such issues. But again, it is not up to me to decide.

Q: Martin Griffiths said yesterday that ceasefire is not a priority for the Russians, and that the Ukrainians are very cooperative for a humanitarian ceasefire. Any comment on that?

A: Is Martin Griffiths a Russian? How can he decide? He is not Russian, and he cannot say what is and what is not a priority for us. We declare humanitarian corridors and ceasefires every day. We did it even today, in regard to this Azovstal plant in Mariupol, but the Ukrainian side does not use it while neglecting those appeals. So in the case of Ukrainians, it is rather a game than a real serious engagement with ceasefires and humanitarian corridors.