Fighting fakes: Pentagon experiments on Ukrainian soldiers

Some media, including those offering information and analytical programs, confidently reported that the Pentagon’s biolaboratories were experimenting on Ukrainian soldiers.

“News of the week”, for example, talking about the successes of the Russian troops in the “special operation”, they reported that “Ukrainian soldiers surrender whole units even in a lull”, while “strange things are found”. Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, Chief of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defense Troops, says:

Among those who laid down their arms, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense, more than a third had been ill with hepatitis A, a fifth with West Nile fever. It can be concluded that the Pentagon biolaboratories located in Ukraine, the very ones that were supervised by the son of the American president, Hunter Biden, performed experiments on the soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. These figures are significantly higher than the average. Taking into account the fact that these diseases were actively studied by the Pentagon in the framework of Ukrainian projects, there is reason to believe that the military personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were involved as volunteers in experiments to assess the tolerance of dangerous infectious diseases.

stopfake explains: the very assumption that Ukrainian soldiers were infected with infectious diseases before being sent to the front is absurd. As well as the assertion, by the way, not supported by anything, that the Pentagon laboratories were involved in the infections. The choice of viruses for the tests in question also seems absurd.

Let’s start with a goal The Insider: why would biolaboratories need to infect volunteers with hepatitis A? A vaccine for this disease exists and is being used effectively, so there is no need to develop one. Creating an effective drug? Also absurd – the existing methods of therapy are used quite successfully.

The hepatitis A virus, as a biological weapon, is absolutely hopeless. A disease that could incapacitate enemy soldiers for several weeks (symptoms – general weakness, poor health, fatigue, muscle and joint pain – last up to 54 days) would look promising in terms of combat use and could even be considered, as a “humane” non-lethal weapon. As a rule, Botkin’s disease ends with a complete recovery, restoration of liver functionality and the appearance of stable immunity. However, hepatitis A has a too long incubation period – from 14 to 42 days, 28 days on average. This reduces the effectiveness of such a “weapon” in a combat situation to zero. Yes, and hepatitis A spreads through infected food and water, so the task of infecting enemy soldiers is quite difficult.

In addition, an interesting question arises: how did it “manage to establish” that the prisoners had been ill with hepatitis A? It is possible, of course, to determine the presence of immunity, but to find out what caused it – a disease or vaccination – is a difficult task. And vaccination against this disease is widely used in Ukraine.

What about West Nile fever? At one time, unlike hepatitis A, it was considered as a biological weapon. The lethality of this infectious disease is approximately 4.5%. Half of the patients develop serous meningitis. The fever is spread by mosquitoes and ticks, and they, in turn, become infected from migratory birds – transmission from person to person is impossible.

The incubation period for West Nile fever is 3-6 days. The disease begins acutely, with a sharp rise in temperature to 38-40°C. But use in combat conditions seems unrealistic: there is no vaccine for this disease, and if somehow the infected insects are released in the front line area, it will be unrealistic to save the soldiers of their own army from infection. Professor Natalya Kalinina, Chief Researcher at the Center for International Security at IMEMO RAS, wrote in Rossiyskaya Gazeta in 2012:

“The probability of the use of biological weapons (BW) is close to zero. Now there is no point in using BW, just as there is, in fact, no biological weapon itself. <...> In the period before and after World War II, many developed countries had programs to develop biological weapons and technology for their production. The main types of BW are anthrax, plague, cholera, West Nile fever, Lasso fever, etc. But not a single country has applied it even during the war, since the biopathogen does not distinguish between “friends and foes”, and the consequences of its use are poorly predictable. <…>Besides, biological weapons are an extremely inconvenient tool for terrorism. A biological terrorist attack on a global scale is unlikely. Although there were precedents. For example, the Aum Shinrikyo sect tried to commit a similar act, even before the gas attack on the Tokyo subway. The sectarians infected the plague with fleas and dispersed them in the urban environment. But the desired results were not achieved. There have long been many terrorist organizations in the world, including quite wealthy ones. Nevertheless, no one has yet succeeded in creating and effectively using biological weapons.”

In Ukraine, West Nile fever is rarely diagnosed. During the summer of 2021, only 5 cases were detected, with one of the cases infected in Cameroon. The statement that 20% of captured soldiers were ill with this disease looks completely ridiculous and simply fantastic. In order to believe this, one must assume that for some reason it is precisely those Ukrainian servicemen who “participated in the tests” who are surrendering en masse.

Our publication previously reported how The Insider debunked the myth about two serviceable latest French Caesar self-propelled guns captured by the Russians, allegedly abandoned by the Ukrainians during the retreat. But the story didn’t end there. It turned out, the Russian media wrote, that the guns … were sold. There was no confirmation of this fact, not a single photo, only a link to a tweet of a little-known French politician…

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