If Russia is expanding its development and potential stockpile of biological weapons, in addition to the other observations made by experts in the article, I'd add that this effort would align with Putin's consistent desires to return a diminished Russia to a "superpower empire" historical context. This motivation has already been discussed with regard to Putin's invasion(s) of Ukraine.
"In the satellite photos, ground-clearing becomes visible in May 2022, a few months after the start of Russia’s full-scale Ukraine invasion, and around the time of a Kremlin-led disinformation campaign that accused the United States of helping Kyiv create a secret bioweapons program. Russian officials filed a formal complaint at the United Nations in June 2022, and suggested, without evidence, that Ukraine was preparing to use biological weapons against Russian forces.
The Soviet Union used a similar playbook in justifying a massive bioweapons program in the 1970s and 1980s. Soon after the United States outlawed biological weapons and destroyed its Cold War stockpile in the late 1960s, Soviet leaders began putting tens of thousands of military and civilian scientists to work on an expanded program to weaponize diseases such as anthrax, smallpox and the bubonic plague. Russian defectors, including several of the program’s top scientists, revealed the existence of the illegal weaponization project in the late 1980s. Many said the work was driven by a conviction — promoted by Kremlin officials — that Western countries were making the same weapons in secret.
Intelligence officials see a similar strategy at work in Russia’s recent use of chemical weapons that are also banned under international law. The United States and other countries have accused Moscow of making outlawed nerve agents and using them in assassination attempts against opposition leaders and defectors, including Sergei Skripal, an exiled Russian military intelligence officer who was poisoned by Russian operatives in 2018 at his home in Salisbury, England. The State Department accused Russia in an April report of repeatedly using banned chemicals as weapons in Ukraine, citing videos posted by Russian soldiers showing chemical grenades dropped on Ukrainian troop positions."
#bioweapons #BiologicalWeapons #CBRN
Original https://wapo.st/4hhyzxw
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