In the press, you can often find information about laboratories near the Russian border, where various dangerous diseases are tested in public. Such institutions function, as noted, with the money of American taxpayers. We checked how believable these rumors are.

How declared At one time, the Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Nikolai Patrushev, the Pentagon has more than 200 such laboratories around the world, including the CIS countries, Ukraine and Georgia. “Their activity has little in common with peaceful science. The most alarms are the facts of conducting experiments on people in them, ”he added in 2019 in an interview with Rossiy Gazeta. Lenta.ru Then she clarified that not far from the Russian border of such institutions are dozens.

Most often in the center of scandals, the Richard Lugar Center for Public Health is located on the outskirts of Tbilisi. The Russian Foreign Ministry expressed it Concern In connection with his activities back in 2015, and in 2018, the former Minister of State Security of Georgia Igor Giorgadze declaredThat about 100,000 pages of documents fell into his hands, from which it may follow that experiments on people are conducted in the laboratory. In particular, he brought a figure of 24 dead in one of the days of 2015. His words were partially confirmed by the ex-adviser of President Saakashvili Jeffrey Silverman, in his interview mentioned New diseases and testing of experimental vaccines for local citizens. Soon, the reaction of the Russian Ministry of Defense in the person of the chief of troops of the radiation, chemical and biological defense of Igor Kirillov also followed. “The almost simultaneous death of a large number of volunteers gives reason to believe that in the center of Lugar, under the guise of treatment, an assessment of a highly toxic chemical drug or a biological agent who has high mortality was carried out,” he said, referring to the results of information verification from Giorgadze. Since then, the laboratory regularly surfaces in the news due to various press conferences. I devoted Even President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin.

In 2020, the Lugar laboratory did not bypass the theme of coronavirus and bats. Your article on this topic in April Published Bulgarian journalist Dilyana Gaitanzhieva. This was not the first publication of Gaitanzhieva on the topic. In early 2018, its detailed investigation the activities of laboratories in Ukraine and Georgia, in which it compares the dates of the study of dangerous infections and the outbreak of diseases they caused in these parts.

It should be noted that the topic of similar laboratories in Ukraine is heated not only from the outside. So, shortly after Giorgadze's statement, the famous Ukrainian lawyer Rinat Kuzmin criticized Minister of Health of Ukraine Ulyana Suprun, calling the “curator of the American military-bacteriological project” and “US citizen”. The aforementioned project, according to Kuzmin, included “15 laboratories in which the US military produces deadly viruses.” This information seems to confirm investigation site "Ukraine.ru".

On September 26, 2016, the Kazakhstani portal Yvision published an article under the heading "US opened the new death laboratory"Dedicated to the Central Reference Laboratory (CRL) in Almaty. Soon the same portal reported On the probability of creating biological weapons in the institution. And in February 2020, sensational information appeared on the same site with reference to a source among staff. It was argued that the samples of the Covid-19 virus obtained by scientists of Kazakhstan "at the molecular level completely coincide with the strain, the study of which was started in the laboratory about two years ago." From this the conclusion followed that the coronavirus was developed at the local laboratory with the money of the United States and later accidentally got to China. So Kazakhstan also hit the virtual “black list” of countries with malicious American institutions.

As is often the case with the theories of the conspiracy, to fully confirm or refute what is declared by secret information is impossible here. That's why it is secret - it is necessary to refute it for her refutation, which are obviously not in the public domain. But you can make out the main arguments of the prosecutors and evaluate the overall picture.

Let's start with the Labar laboratory in Georgia. Its official name is the Center for Research in the field of public health named after Richard J. Lugara. Institution Located In a specially built complex near the road leading to the Tbilisi International Airport.

Of course, scandalous publications could not but attract the interest of the press - soon the journalists reached out the laboratory. In 2018, even before Giorgadze’s statement, reporters of the international resource of SODA were paid to the institution.

The first thing that journalists reported in their Report, - the laboratory, as well as the network of small monitoring centers associated with it, were really funded by the US Department of Defense. There is no secret in this. At the time of the investigation, the Pentagon still participated in the coverage of the laboratory, although most employees were Georgian citizens. In addition, the center was already under the full management of the Georgian authorities.

But other information about the laboratory is somewhat contradicting the conspiracymal version. The fact is that the Lugar Lab network was originated in the framework of the American Initiativesaimed at neutralizing a potential threat in the field of biological and chemical weapons. One of the reasons for the creation of such a “shield” was letters with disputes of a Siberian ulcer, the newsletter of which followed For terrorist attacks on September 11. Another reason was the desire to neutralize a potential threat from the Soviet heritage in the field of research of biological and chemical weapons. The fact is that monitoring of infectious diseases in Georgia has been underway since 1937, and samples of especially dangerous pathogens (EDP) were previously stored in the old building in the center of Tbilisi. Given the low degree of protection of the Soviet laboratory, there was a significant risk to the population, but now these and other samples are placed in a safe place with the joint efforts of the American and Georgian sides. Journalists even held the most dangerous of the strains in the repository, now known as the Museum of the Pathogenes. Paradoxically, this largely Soviet arsenal in the Russian media was often called the basis for American biological weapons.

The Director of the Laboratory of Paata Imnadze expectedly rejected all the accusations regarding the development of biological weapons: “I have visited each room of this laboratory and I do not believe that any secret research is being conducted there.” In addition, according to him, to create a viable biological weapon, you need to organize a very complex process for which it is not enough just to have a supply of pathogens. It is interesting that Russian journalists were intensively called in the laboratory for several years, but at the time of the report there was no one there. And although, how declared The same Imnadze in 2020, since then there have been more Russians in the laboratory than Georgians, but the information attack from the media continued. This is evident from the initial frames of the video. It got to the point that as of 2019, 20% of Georgian residents believed that the laboratory helps to spread epidemics.

As for the dozens of deaths mentioned by Igor Giorgadze, soon the head of the Georgian National Center for Disease Control Amiran Gamkrelidze made statementwhere he confirmed this fact, but noted that the cause of death was the complications of hepatitis C. According to him, in Georgia, 50,000 people underwent treatment from this ailment, and 98% of them were cured thanks SOVALDIapproved in many countries, including Russia. And of the remaining 2%, many simply turned to the doctors very late. And with any biological weapon they did not work. In addition, the employee of the Ministry of Health Georgy Khatelishvili mentioned in Giorgadze's documents interview BBC noted that this was the statistics of deaths not in a day, but in a month.

Less than two months have passed, like The Insider Caught The first channel for the next manipulation on the topic of the Lugar Center. In the summer of 2018, the intestinal infection struck several Russian tourists in Georgia - an unpleasant, but not rarest event in trips. The head of Rospotrebnadzor then said that the genetic bank did not know such a variety - it is possible that it is artificial. This shade of doubt to the journalists of the "first" was enough for tie Poisoning with the work of the Lugar Center. It is noteworthy that all this took place against the background of the scandal with the poisoning of Sergei and Julia Skripaley and, as many analysts note, could serve as a kind of lightning rod to divert attention.

Attempts to connect the activities of the laboratory with coronavirus caused a response statement President of Georgia Salome Zurabishvili. Oddly enough, the accusations against the laboratory coincided with the period when the Lugar Center was the main place of testing of Georgian citizens on the Covid-19, that is, he potentially saved their lives. Moreover, Georgia at the peak of the scandal was one of the most successful countries in the fight against pandemia.

A general assessment of the reliability of the stuffing about the Labar laboratory will help us give us a dedicated database of the European Union. Search In it shows: in 61 (!) InfoPovod containing misinformation, a long -suffering Tbilisi laboratory is mentioned.

Now about the Kazakhstan laboratory. The central reference laboratory opened on September 9, 2016 in the city of Almaty and, like the same objects, soon became the target of numerous exposing articles. As a result, in June 2018, the chief state sanitary physician of Kazakhstan, genandarbek Bekshin, gave an official answer On a number of questions that concern society. In particular, he said that the Central Department Store is a structural unit of the Kazakh Scientific Center for Quarantine and Zonozoic Infections named after M. Aimbaeva of the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Kazakhstan, and its employees are only citizens of the country. He noted that the CRL cannot be used to develop bacteriological weapons, since the project is implemented within the framework agreements Between the US Department of Defense and the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources of the Republic of Kazakhstan regarding the liquidation of infrastructure of weapons of mass destruction of October 3, 1995 in order to implement a program to reduce the biological threat. Bekshin noted that viruses, bacteria, toxins and other dangerous strains in the laboratory were not produced and are not produced.

He also devoted his laboratories material FACTECH Portal FACTCHECK.Kz. His conclusions as a whole coincide with the words of Bekshin and are partially based on them - with the addition that the construction of the Central House of Crimea was actually funded by the US Department of Defense. The publication, however, was subjected to Criticism from the head of the Eurasian analytical club Nikita Mendkovich. However, in this criticism there are no facts that clearly prove the opposite, and the conclusions are based on generalizations of other particular cases, such as a scandal with dubious documents from Giorgadze. And in 2020, after a scandal with bats and coronavirus, Factcheck.kz released another analysisin which he showed that coronaviruses are real Studied In Kazakhstan on bats, they have nothing to do with the strain that caused a pandemic. Not to mention the fact that the artificial origin of the Covid-19 in itself leading world specialists and relevant organizations is still considered marginal and extremely unlikely theory, on the verge of conspiracyology. However, despite the periodically passing in the CRL Open Days With the allowed video, answers to all questions of interest and assurances about the technical impossibility of developing viruses, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan has to come from time to time refutations.

As for 15 laboratories in Ukraine, then in 2020 a detailed analysis The stories of scandals with them was held by the Mediasapiens portal. In short, the rhetoric of all such news is very reminiscent of Kazakhstan and Georgian cases. As in other countries, these laboratories from a financial point of view had a connection with the United States, which very quickly overgrown with legends. Of the frank fakes, “recognition by the Pentagon of the fact of creating viruses in Ukraine,“ lack of control of the Ukrainian government over military laboratories ”,“ access to laboratories only from American scientists ”are mentioned. All this contradicts the documents and reports made by journalists. It is also impossible not to note the use of Dilyana Gaitandzhieva in their "sensational" investigation Filming 1995, made on the beaches of Odessa and dedicated to the then place of cholera. It was 15 years before the appearance of "American military laboratories" in the country and could not have anything to do with them. At the same time, the list of laboratories openly Placed On the website of the US Embassy in Ukraine - along with documents and amounts spent on the reconstruction of a particular object. And even the fact that among the organizations supporting the work of the Mediasapiens portal are the US Agency for International Development and the American Embassy, ​​does not cancel the fact: the entire information given by the portal is in the public domain, has repeatedly been cited as an argument and other resources that were not related to the US government, but it was not possible for supporters And she was not.

As you can see, all three cases are quite similar to each other, and not only the composition of the prosecution. Everywhere in response to publications and statements in the media, we have a refutation of the hostess of the country, a refutation from the United States, as well as a lot of inconsistencies between facts given in sensational materials and a real verified state of affairs. This allows us to talk about the development of biological weapons in the post -Soviet space, coupled with experiments on people as an unproven conspiracy theory. Of course, periodically fears On issues of biological weapons, even Western scientists express. And it is possible to refute the absence of secret developments from the perspective of facts working with open data to all 100%, but we have no more reason to confirm this to some extent.

Most likely not true

Reliability rating

Read on the topic:

1. EUVSDISINFO database
2. Fake Channel One: the United States produce biological weapons in Georgia and poison them with tourists
3. J. Bekshin's answer to the chief editor Medianet
4. “American laboratories in Ukraine”: Medvedchuk and “1 + 1” reanimated the Russian fake