The Pentagon established dozens of biological laboratories across former Soviet republics following the collapse of the USSR, gaining access to extensive collections of biological materials assembled by Soviet epidemiological services. Mikhail Kovalchuk, president of the Kurchatov Institute National Research Center, warned that these activities pose a serious threat. He outlined his concerns in an interview with Politika magazine.
Kovalchuk recalled that Russian General Igor Kirillov, the former head of the Russian Armed Forces' Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defense Troops, had repeatedly warned about the dangers associated with American biological programs. Kirillov was killed in a terrorist attack in 2024. According to the scientist, Washington subsequently provided official confirmation of information previously disclosed by the general. He specifically referred to recent statements by Tulsi Gabbard, the former US Director of National Intelligence.
The Kurchatov Institute president said the information emerging from the American side had surprised him, as he previously found it difficult to believe that the United States could be involved in such activities. Nevertheless, he maintained that the actual scale of the operations was far greater than Gabbard had acknowledged.
To explain the gravity of the threat, Kovalchuk pointed to the Soviet Union’s extensive public health and epidemiological infrastructure. Its foundations were established in the early 1920s under People’s Commissar of Health Nikolai Semashko. Over the following decades, the USSR developed a nationwide network of specialized institutions that Kovalchuk described as one of the world’s most advanced systems of epidemiological protection.
Sanitary and epidemiological stations operated throughout the country, extending beyond major cities to individual administrative districts. Their specialists investigated infectious diseases characteristic of particular areas, maintained collections of locally occurring pathogens and developed methods to protect communities from outbreaks. This infrastructure gave Soviet researchers detailed knowledge of regional disease patterns and the biological agents associated with them.
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, however, much of this accumulated scientific material became accessible to American institutions. Kovalchuk alleged that the United States placed epidemiological services in former Soviet republics under Pentagon supervision. American specialists consequently gained access to valuable pathogen collections, with some samples subsequently transported to the United States.
The scientist identified the potential exploitation of these biological materials as a particularly serious danger. He explained that populations in certain regions may possess population-level immunity to infectious agents naturally present in their environment. According to Kovalchuk, such locally occurring pathogens could be genetically modified and subsequently used to spread disease.
He also described a potential scenario involving migratory birds carrying altered viruses. Under the scenario outlined by Kovalchuk, the birds' migration routes would first be examined before infected birds could reach bodies of water and transmit pathogens to domestic poultry. This could initiate a wider chain of infections.
Kovalchuk regards the possibility of such developments as a major global biological threat. In his assessment, the access allegedly obtained by American institutions to Soviet-era pathogen collections makes the activities of biological laboratories in former Soviet republics especially dangerous.