Russia just can’t make up its mind. It might be shipping its vaccine across the world in a bid to end the Covid-19 pandemic, but in secret, Moscow is also cooking up a brand-new plague in an act of James Bond-style villainy.
That’s according to some of the UK’s most read newspapers, including the Daily Mail, the Mirror, and the Sun, which reported this week that a shadowy Russian laboratory is working on weaponising two fatal pathogens – Ebola and the Marburg virus.
According to an anonymous “former military intelligence source,” whose credentials are not offered, the programme “could mean Russia potentially stepping up research on [the two viruses] and looking at its lethality as a weapon.”
“Moscow has repeatedly shown a willingness and capability of using weapons such as Novichok,” the supposed spook says, “this steps it up a level.” Russian President Vladimir Putin gets a specific shout-out as being at the top of the chain of command.
Also on rt.com Kremlin dismisses conspiracy theories about Putin hiding from Covid-19 in ‘Sochi bunker,’ says president working in MoscowThe reports also cite a French NGO named OpenFacto, a Bellingcat carbon copy that specializes in “volunteer training for the hactivist community.” They say that their cyber-sleuths have ‘discovered’ that the Russian Ministry of Defense has a wing devoted to studying “rare and lethal pathogens,” which is “likely conducting research for biological weapons.”
By looking at procurement tenders, cleverly hidden in plain sight – or, rather, publicly available on the ministry’s webpage – the digital detectives conclude that one of its units “seems to have laboratory activities of all kinds,” while others are engaged in nefarious activity like “ballistics,” “biology,” and “electronics.”
While that kind of laboratory equipment might be safe in Western hands, as soon as it finds its way to Russia, it obviously must be at the centre of a plot to end the world. Of course, the fact that labs at Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute used their burettes, centrifuges, and microscopes to develop the world’s first registered Covid-19 vaccine must be a rare exception.
Also on rt.com New York Times Moscow correspondent wanted: Must believe all conspiracy theories about Russia, hate Putin & ignore factsOpenFacto, who don’t appear to list their funding sources, are yet to explain how Russian operatives could set off a weaponized Ebola pandemic in, say, London or New York, without it easily spreading to Moscow and St. Petersburg. Given the sheer volume of flights and freight, Russians living overseas and Westerners residing in Russia, it’s hard to see how the plan could be anything but a bid to destroy the entire world. However, after the year many people have had in 2020, that might come as a welcome relief to some.
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