Biological weapons resurface in disinformation campaigns

The Central Public Health Reference Laboratory in Tbilisi Georgia Photo: Q9k2C6J3 (CC) commons.wikimedia.org

Kirillov also pointed to the Richard Lugar Centre for Public Health Research in Georgia. According to him, “the Lugar Centre is only a small element of the extensive US military-biological programme in the territory of states adjacent to Russia”.

A month before Kirillov’s press conference, Igor Giorgadze, a former KGB agent and former Georgian state security minister, launched a campaign against the Public Health Research Center in the Russian media. He asserted that he obtained thousands of pages of documents from “Georgian friends” and that they contain very “strange facts”. It should be noted that Kirillov’s claims were also based on Giorgadze’s report. Moreover, the accusations were made around the same time the United Kingdom and the Netherlands were accusing Russian spies of being behind an attempted attack on the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague.

Soviet legacy

Using biological weapons as a narrative is not something new for Russian security institutions. In the Soviet period, biological weapons were a constant component in the information war against the West. Even before taking power in Russia, the Bolsheviks used disinformation as a tool of political struggle. In 1923, the government created a specific structure to be responsible for deception operations on the state level. In the same year, the Politburo of the central committee decided that, in order to organise the struggle against enemy propaganda, it would set up a special disinformation bureau for conducting active intelligence. The Politburo’s new disinformation bureau was given specific tasks: accounting for information received by military intelligence; consideration of the nature of information of interest to the enemy; a clarification of the degree of awareness of the enemy; a compilation and technical production of false information; supplying the enemy with materials and documents; and preparing a number of articles and notes for the media with fictitious materials, as approved by one of the secretaries of the central committee.

After the Second World War and during the Cold War, the Soviet Union began actively using biological weapons narratives in its information operations against the West. In the 1960s, Soviet propaganda spread fake news about how “the United States intentionally infected Eastern Europe with the Colorado potato beetle”. According to Tamara Eidelman’s recent book, How Propaganda Works, one of their most complex fabrications was the massive influx of Colorado potato beetles across the Baltic Sea. The Colorado potato beetle is a very dangerous insect which mainly feeds on potatoes and is widespread throughout North America, Asia and Europe. In 1871 one American entomologist warned Europeans about the danger of the Colorado potato beetle, and in 1875, France, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland, fearing the insect, banned the import of American potatoes. It is possible that the potato beetle existed in Europe before the Second World War, but during the war American troops most likely brought the insect with them as American potatoes were widely used on American bases throughout Europe.

After the Second World War, the Colorado potato beetle ravaged Europe, in particular in Central and Eastern Europe. The Soviets found the spread of these beetles a perfect narrative to hit against the US in its information war. The Soviets spread disinformation throughout the whole Soviet bloc (and beyond) that the mass reproduction of the Colorado potato beetle was a direct result of Americans purposefully dropping the beetle in mass quantities from planes over several areas of the German Democratic Republic and in the Baltic Sea region in order to infect the Polish People’s Republic.

Eidelman outlines the measures the Soviets made to fight the beetle. They were, however, not scientific in nature, but ideological. The central committee directed its disinformation bureau and other agencies to publish in newspapers like Pravda, Izvestiya and Sovetskaya Zemledelie – articles on the dangers relating to the rise of the Colorado potato beetle, and especially the villainous spread of the insect by the Americans. They also instructed that these articles be published via press agencies in all the Soviet republics and the states of the Soviet bloc. Finally, the Soviet authorities published brochures and colourful posters about the Colorado potato beetle.

A similar strategy was utilised by the Soviets in North Korea and China. In the 1950s, for example, a Soviet disinformation campaign claimed that “the United States was using rodents and insects to infect the North Korean people with diseases”. For the campaign they cited the groundless facts that were promoted by an international commission of scientists which was established under Soviet control. The conclusions were also picked up by left-wing media in Western Europe. The method applied was the simplest and most effective: Soviet security organisations generously paid “experts” who produced predetermined conclusions which were then used to spread fake information in North Korea and China.

Today’s parallel

In April 2018, Maria Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry’s press secretary, stated that “the very fact of large-scale medical-biological activities of the Pentagon at the borders of Russia” is of particular concern for Moscow. On April 12th, the eve of the US strikes on Syria in response to alleged chemical attacks, Zakharova stated that the United States, through its programmes financed by the Pentagon, is creating a network of microbiological laboratories in the Caucasus and Central Asia. This was a direct reference to the Lugar Public Health Centre, among others.

Interestingly, since the Skripal case (the intentional poisoning of the former Russian officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the United Kingdom by Russian intelligence officers) and the chemical attack by Assad forces in Douma, Moscow has ratcheted up the rhetoric about US laboratories in the Caucasus and Central Asia. By employing such allegations, Russia is sending certain signals to the US as part of its ongoing confrontation with the West. Several months after Zakharova’s statement, the Russian minister of foreign affairs repeated similar accusations regarding Kazakhstan. The reason for Moscow’s recent grievances were amendments made (signed in May 2018) to a 2010 agreement between Kazakhstan and the US which allowed commercial rail transit of special cargo through the territory of Kazakhstan to Afghanistan. The amendments allow the US to use the territory of Kazakhstan for supplying American and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

The laboratories that Russian officials point to are part of an ongoing project that was established by the US in the Nunn-Lugar Biological Threat Reduction programme. The programme seeks to dismantle former biological research, development and production infrastructure that is present in post-Soviet states. According to official documents, the project aims to further prevent the proliferation of expertise, materials, equipment and technologies that could contribute to the development of biological weapons. The programme has conducted bio-threat reduction projects in countries like Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Ukraine. But it was only recently that false claims, like what Igor Giorgadze claimed above, have started to appear in Russian media – spreading the conspiracy of American advancement of biological warfare, instead of the dismantling of it. The methods of disinformation used to spread conspiracy theories are similar to those the Soviet’s spread about the potato bug.

Vladimir Putin himself has expressed concerns, which has fuelled the level of disinformation spread. He has said that “these developments – if they are actually taking place – are very dangerous and related to the latest achievements in genetics”. Although he stopped short of stating whether he believed the allegations are true or not, he added that “it is about finding agents that can selectively affect people depending on their ethnic group and over two or three generations, allegedly, they have used animals to conduct such experiments”. Putin also warned the West, saying: “If someone is developing this technology, they have to understand that others will be doing so as well. So it is better to sit at the negotiating table beforehand and develop unified rules of conduct in this very sensitive area.”

These facts also show how Moscow’s target against the “Lugar laboratories” is not Georgia or other post-Soviet republics, but the West – in particular, the accusations over Skripal and its air strikes in Syria. The Kremlin may also try to paint itself as a defender of the former Soviet republics against the American “evil biochemical weapons programme”.

To what end?

In creating a negative account of the co-operation between the US and former Soviet states and accusing them of violating the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, Moscow may be using this tactic in order to justify its own chemical and biological weapons programme. Russia, in recent years, has already used arguments of bacterial or biological threats as cause for imposing economic sanctions on several former Soviet states. Moreover, it uses offensive measures under the guise of defensive efforts – as can be seen in Ukraine. In the face of an intensifying confrontation with the West, the Kremlin’s rhetoric can be interpreted as a signal to western states that it may consider action in response to the “threat” of biological warfare in former Soviet states.

Nevertheless, it is very difficult to exactly explain Russia’s intention in using biological weapons as its most recent anti-West narratives. This is mainly due to the fact that Russia has several aims, which could include the following: geopolitical (increasing the confrontation with the West); preventing closer co-operation between the West and former Soviet states; creating public mistrust against the West and local authorities; and creating panic among certain populations. Clearly, the Soviet legacy of using biological threats has not completely disappeared. In the end, Russia may try to position itself a defender, to save those most threatened by these so-called threats.

Nurlan Aliyev is a PhD candidate and researcher at the Faculty of Political Science and International Studies of the University of Warsaw. His research focuses on political and security processes in Russia, post-Soviet countries and asymmetric warfare threats.

biological weapons, disinformation, Russia