By Olha Chepil | 2024-11-07

KYIV -- A Soviet-era biological warfare laboratory has become the site of ominous new construction, satellite images show.

The complex is in Sergiev Posad-6, a closed military town situated among birch forests northeast of Moscow.

The new facilities could likely be used to research and process deadly pathogens, analysts say.

Unusual activity began there a few months after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and has continued over the past two years, the Washington Post reported October 25.

Satellite imagery collected by MAXAR and Planet Labs reveals not only construction of a road and the renovation of the old laboratory at Sergiev Posad-6 but also the construction of 10 new buildings totaling more than 250,000 sq. ft., the newspaper reported.

"I assume Russia is trying to upgrade its old lab and build new ones to research new viruses and pathogens," Ivan Stupak, a former Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) officer and analyst with the Ukrainian Institute of the Future, told Kontur.

"Of course, we don't rule out the possibility that they might do this for combat purposes, to create some viruses for circulation somehow as weapons."

Although there is no evidence Russia has used such biological weapons in Ukraine, the construction at Sergiev Posad-6 is being closely watched by bioweapon specialists and US intelligence agencies as the war continues through its third year, the Post reported.

"Chemical and biological weapons are everything the Russians love to scare the world with," Serhiy Kuzan, a military analyst and director of the Ukrainian Center for Security and Cooperation, told Kontur.

Threat of bioterrorism

Russian officials have publicly confirmed in recent weeks that scientists will use the labs to study deadly microbes such as the Ebola viruses, ostensibly to strengthen the country's defenses against bioterrorism or future potential pandemics, the Post reported.

During the Cold War, Sergiev Posad-6 was the Soviet Union's main biological weapon research center, where scientists experimented with the viruses that cause smallpox, Ebola and various hemorrhagic fevers.

"Russia is trying to revive or activate all this, and to be ready for a confrontation. Because we know they simply cannot win in a fair fight," Viktor Yahun, former deputy director of the SBU, told Kontur.

"And so, how insidious it is -- committing some kind of terrorist attacks, or launching some kind of missile with a bacteriological weapon, is their tactic."

The satellite images of Sergiev Posad-6 show multiple indicators that combined point to a high-containment biological facility, the Post reported.

Some of the buildings have "an unusually large amount" of rooftop air-handling equipment. There is also evidence of underground infrastructure, layouts consistent with partitioned labs, enhanced security measures and what appears to be a power plant.

The images also reveal upgrades to the site's civilian areas, where researchers could live.

"This site has been known since the Cold War," Yahun said. "It is a laboratory that handled weapons of mass destruction, both biological and bacteriological."

The entire civilized world has rejected the use of bioweapons, said Kuzan. "This is a weapon of terror directed against civilians."

"The Kremlin is a large terrorist organization, for which the state of Russia is a tool and whose combat wing is the Russian army and Russian intelligence services," he said.

Secrecy and intimidation

Sergiev Posad-6 is one of three Russian weapon sites that international experts never have been allowed to visit.

The site may still contain frozen collections of viruses that Soviet scientists studied and tested, say analysts.

"The Kremlin did not get rid of this FSB [Federal Security Service] lab," said Stupak. "On the contrary, it kept it and continues to experiment with various substances for use in combat."

In recent years, the Kremlin has increased funding for disruptive operations in Western countries, in particular disinformation campaigns, cyber operations, direct subversion, sabotage and assassinations.

The use of poisons is a known Kremlin tactic, although authorities deny the existence of such weapons in Russia.

In one notorious case in 2018, Sergei Skripal, an exiled Russian ex-military intelligence officer, was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent in his own home in Salisbury, England.

His daughter was poisoned too. Both survived, but a local woman died from Novichok poisoning.

"Dating back to Soviet times, Russia has a long history of working with all kinds of lethal poisons," Stupak said. "The episode with the Skripals involved treating the doors, sending people, transporting this bottle [of Novichok] ... In other words, showing everyone that 'we can reach them.'"

"This is done only to intimidate," he said.

Illegal warfare

Russian troops have used chemical weapons in Ukraine, so nothing is stopping them from deploying biological weapons in the future, observers say, pointing out that such acts violate international laws of warfare.

Moscow's use of unidentified gases on the front is increasing, according to Ukrainian Col. Artem Vlasiuk of the Support Forces' Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Command.

Russian troops use chemical agents banned in warfare as a psychological operation to sow panic among the Ukrainian forces, he told the Kyiv Independent newspaper on October 28.

"This indicates that Russia is trying to attack on all fronts -- nuclear weapons, biological weapons, bacteriological and chemical weapons," said Yahun.

Much of what transpires inside the new labs at Sergiev Posad-6 is hidden from view. But biological weapons could first be tested on animals and then on human guinea pigs, such as prisoners, analysts say.

"There is general concern that they might use Ukrainian prisoners for this testing," Yahun warned.