The EcoHealth Alliance, a non-governmental organization, played a key role in the implementation of U.S. military-biological programs and had certain instructions from the authorities regarding the possible effects of its experiments with viruses, the head of the Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defense Troops of the Russian Armed Forces, Igor Kirilov, revealed on Monday.
Documents that the Russian military obtained from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), belonging to the U.S. Department of Defense, confirm that specialists from this NGO had been investigating the diversity of bat populations since 2015, looking for new strains of coronaviruses and their forms of transmission from animals to humans. More than 2,500 specimens of these small mammals were studied in total.
The information found in the documents implies that these biotechnologists were increasing the contagious capabilities of the microorganisms, Kirilov said. Thus, one of the instructions stated that, if as a result of "any experiment" a virus was obtained "with the transmission or pathogenicity properties improved more than 10 times in comparison with a strain of natural origin", it should "stop working immediately and inform the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the corresponding Biosafety Council".
In this regard, the general stressed that the high readiness of messenger RNA vaccines against covid-19 in the early 2020s raises questions about the real goals of programs aimed at improving the properties of dangerous pathogens. According to Kirilov, it would appear that pharmaceutical companies were developing the vaccines in advance, but were unable to bring them to market quickly due to the specificity of the virus.
Kirilov said the pandemic unfolded as planned in an experiment called Event 201 two months before it began, conducted by John Hopkins University and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. At that time, the response to a possible epidemic of a previously unknown coronavirus, which, it was assumed, had been transferred from bats to humans via an intermediate host, the body of a pig, was tested.
The Russian Defense Ministry repeatedly denounced that the U.S. conducts its most controversial research from the point of view of international law outside the national territory. On several occasions the epidemic situation was aggravated by very dangerous infections in the areas where such laboratories were or are located, and unusual outbreaks were recorded. The case of Rift Valley fever in 1977 in Cairo (Egypt), where the U.S. Navy Biological Laboratory No. 3 had been installed, is cited.
On the other hand, the senior Russian military official stated that U.S. law enforcement agencies are aware of the practice of bribing employees of the media and social networks when addressing the causes of the covid-19 outbreak.
Cessation of dangerous activities
In recent months, the Russian Defense Ministry's efforts have halted the conduct of U.S. military-biological programs in Ukraine, and the Pentagon is transferring unfinished investigations to Central Asian and Eastern European countries, Kirilov stated.
The equipment that was in Ukrainian laboratories was transferred to chemical and pharmacological enterprises in Poland and the Baltic countries. In turn, the Ukrainian experts involved have been relocated to Western countries in 2022 because of the "fear" that they might hand over "additional evidence of illegal activities that violated international commitments," the military officer added.