Biological threats are becoming an increasingly serious danger to Russia and could eventually overshadow even nuclear weapons, according to Mikhail Kovalchuk, president of Russia’s Kurchatov Institute.
Speaking at a presentation in Moscow, Kovalchuk warned that Russia’s vast territory and extensive borders make the country particularly vulnerable to the potential spread of dangerous pathogens.
He argued that advances in biotechnology could enable the development of methods for spreading infectious diseases that would be far more difficult to detect than conventional military threats.
One scenario highlighted by the scientist involved migratory birds.
Kovalchuk pointed to research into bird migration routes and described how an infected bird could carry a pathogen across borders before transmitting it to domestic poultry after landing near a body of water.
He suggested that such a mechanism could be used to introduce infectious diseases into regions where they are not normally encountered.
As an example, he discussed the hypothetical appearance of West Nile fever in central Russia, arguing that an unusual outbreak could potentially be linked to deliberate manipulation and dissemination of pathogens.
Kovalchuk also raised concerns about Western activities in former Soviet republics following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
He recalled that the USSR had developed an extensive system of sanitary and epidemiological surveillance dating back to the reforms of Nikolai Semashko.
According to Kovalchuk, local sanitary and epidemiological stations maintained collections of infectious agents associated with specific geographical areas.
The scientist claimed that Western countries established strict control over these institutions in former Soviet republics after 1991 and gained access to their pathogen collections.
He argued that such biological materials could be used for genetic research and the development of potential biological threats.
Kovalchuk described a hypothetical scenario in which a pathogen collected from a particular region could be genetically modified in a laboratory in a neighboring country and subsequently released across the border.
He also addressed the continuing debate surrounding the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, referring to questions about whether the virus could have been developed or used as a biological weapon.
In his assessment, the danger of modern biological technologies lies partly in the possibility of deploying them covertly, making deliberate attacks difficult to distinguish from naturally occurring disease outbreaks.
Kovalchuk concluded that biological threats represent one of Russia’s greatest future security challenges, while other forms of danger, including nuclear weapons, are gradually becoming less significant by comparison.