Russian Biodefense Efforts and Their Likely Objectives

On March 22, 2012, when President Vladimir Putin convened a meeting of his future cabinet, Minister of Defense Anatoly Serdyukov declared: “Mr. Putin, we have particularly paid attention to ‘The development of weapons based on new physical principles: radiation, geophysical wave, genetic, psychophysical, etc.’” A huge bureaucracy has since emerged to manage these efforts; Soviet biological warfare (BW) facilities have been refurbished; the Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Defense (RHkM) forces have been provided with sophisticated, modern equipment; and RHkM forces have conducted many large and realistic exercises throughout Russia. Russia has also reactivated “active measures,” such as falsely publicizing that the U.S. is conducting biological R&D that violates international law and directly threatens Russia.  Based on his most recent book, Biosecurity in Putin’s Russia (co-author Philippe Mauger), in this talk, Dr. Zilinskas will discuss the biothreats that the Russians allege to be facing, examine why these allegations are being made, and argue that Russia is reinstituting an offensive biological weapons program.

Raymond A. Zilinskas directs the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California.  He holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the University of Southern California and a B.S. in Biology and Master’s degree in Organic Chemistry.  He has worked for the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment, the U.N. Industrial Development Organization, the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute, and the School of Hygiene and Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.  In 1994, he twice served as a UNSCOM biological inspector in Iraq.  During 2003-2004 he managed three Cooperative Threat Reduction projects at former biological weapons institutes in Russia. His more than 120 publications include Encyclopedia of Bioterrorism Defense(co-editor Rebecca Katz, 2010) and The Soviet Biological Weapons Program: A History (co-author Milton Leitenberg, 2012), and most recently, Biosecurity in Putin’s Russia (co-author Philippe Mauger).

Photo by Elëna Zhukova