Armenia to open doors of U.S.-built biolabs to Russia
The labs have been a favorite
target of Russian state-run media scaremongering. Now, with a new
agreement with Yerevan, Moscow should get full access.
Giorgi Lomsadze
Oct 29, 2019
The Richard G. Lugar Center for
Public Health Research, outside Tbilisi, is purportedly the mothership
in a network of U.S. bioweapons labs in the post-Soviet space, according
to Russian government officials. (photo: U.S. Army Lt. Col. Jamie Blow)
Armenia is going to give Russia permanent access to its
Pentagon-sponsored biological labs – a regular source of propaganda and
paranoia in Moscow. The access could give the Kremlin peace of mind
about the American labs in the South Caucasus and potentially spoil
Russia’s favorite anti-American germ-war conspiracy theory.
Russia’s influential daily, Kommersant, reported
on October 25 that Moscow and Yerevan are about to ink a memorandum
allowing Russian health and military officials to observe the workings
of U.S.-sponsored biological labs in Armenia. Kommersant’s sources said
that the memorandum will be signed during Russian Foreign Minister
Sergey Lavrov’s upcoming visit to Armenia, planned for November 10 and
11.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan corroborated the report in an
interview published by Kommersant three days later. “We are still
working on the text of the memorandum,” Pashinyan said.
“The main purpose of this document is to honor the interests of all
sides, to make sure that nobody, none of our partners, have any fears
about the labs.”
The Kremlin has long seized on the story of the U.S.-backed biolabs in its neighborhood, claiming
that the Pentagon is weaponizing germs in them for a potential
biological and chemical offensive on Russia. Moscow helped spread
seasonal outbreaks of fear-mongering in its state-run news, complete
with murky reports of suspicious human and animal deaths in the vicinity
of the labs. Washington went to lengths to pacify Moscow, arguing that
the labs are there to study and prevent epidemiological threats.
Russia’s ire has been mainly focused on Georgia, a close U.S. partner
and one of Moscow’s top antagonists in the former Soviet space. A
flagship laboratory in Tbilisi named after U.S. Senator Richard Lugar,
known as “the Lugar Lab,” has been Moscow’s favorite punching bag, but
Russian ally Armenia also took hits over its own lab.
Georgian and Armenian health authorities have taken delegations of
Russian scientists and journalists on tours of the labs in attempts to
placate Russian concerns, but thus far to no avail. “All claims that we
are creating weapons at the laboratory are absurd. The laboratory has a
scientific research mission and is collaborating with both U.S. and
Russia,” the director of Armenia’s Disease Control and Prevention
Center, Artavazd Vanyan, told Sputnik, the Russian news network that has exhaustively covered the labs.
The agreement on access seems set to help take at least the Armenian labs off Moscow’s propaganda hit list.
Giorgi Lomsadze is a journalist based in Tbilisi, and author of Tamada Tales.
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