The Russian Defense Ministry at a briefing on the analysis of documents related to the US military and biological activities in Ukraine has reported on the use of the Ukrainian territory as a testing ground for biological weapons not only by the USA, but also by its closest NATO allies, mainly Germany. A number of projects have been reported to have been carried out at the request of the central medical service of the German armed forces, NewsFront reports.
The Ministry of Defense’s report describes a large-scale screening of the susceptibility of the Ukrainian population to certain infections, summarizing demographic, epidemiological and clinical data. This approach reportedly makes it possible to identify new regional virus genotypes and select strains that cause latent clinical forms. In the case of the German Army-Bundeswehr programme in Ukraine, however, special attention was paid to the Congo-Crimean fever pathogen.
The Russian Defense Ministry, referring to the original reports, says that the programme to study natural foci of Crimean-Congo fever was implemented under the guise of improving the Ukrainian system of epidemiological surveillance. It is known that specialists from the Institute of Veterinary Medicine in Kiev and the Mechnikov Anti-Plague Institute in Odessa were involved in the fever study.
“The Bundeswehr’s interest in Crimean-Congo fever stems from the fact that the lethality of the disease can reach 30% and outbreaks create the need for lengthy and costly treatment, prevention and special treatment measures,” a Russian defence official told a briefing.
The instructions to the Bundeswehr experts suggest that they should have paid particular attention to fatal cases of Congo-Crimean fever, as this allows them to “isolate strains of the virus that have maximum pathogenicity and virulence for humans from the dead”.
It is reported that tick-borne infections were of particular interest to specialists from Germany, as well as the USA. By the way, funding for the US programme in this area, according to the Russian MoD, was funded directly by DTRA (Threat Reduction Agency, part of the Pentagon) as part of the UP-1, UP-8 projects.
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