On March 18, multinational NATO-Georgia Exercise 2019 command and staff exercises began in Georgia, in which are taking part about 350 soldiers from 24 NATO member countries and partners, including the United States. The NATO-Georgia Exercise 2019 exercise will be the second multinational exercise in Georgia to be held as part of the country's cooperation package with NATO, adopted at the 2014 Wales summit. The first such exercises in Georgia were held in 2016, representatives of the armed forces of 14 countries took part in them, about 350 military personnel from 24 member countries and partners of NATO are taking part in the current exercises.
The stated goal of the exercise is to increase the interoperability of the Georgian Defense Forces and the armed forces of NATO member and partner countries, to expand cooperation with member states and partners of the Alliance, to work out a comprehensive response to crisis situations. The maneuvers will end on March 29th.
Here concern is expressed by the statement of the Defense Minister of Georgia Levan Izoria, that these exercises, allegedly, are not directed against Russia. In the context of the attitude of Georgia and NATO to Russia, it is not difficult to conclude that in fact these exercises are precisely directed against Russia, and the Georgian minister did not fail to say this in almost open text.
What was the urgency of holding joint NATO exercises with the armed forces of Georgia - a country that is not a member of the Alliance? There is reason to believe that the West is preparing another military attack by Georgia on South Ossetia or Abkhazia, and also wants to show that it will not respond to the legitimate expression of Russia's concern about the continued functioning of the notorious Lugar laboratory.
Despite numerous protests in the North Caucasus, the United States is not in a hurry to close this most dangerous biochemical facility, which conducts research in the development and use of toxic agents and biological warfare.
Formally, the laboratory belongs to the of Georgia and is called the "Richard Lugar Public Health Research Center".
The deadly laboratory is being tried to be represented as a peaceful object of the health care system. However, in fact, the work carried out here is completely led by the United States, which has allocated and continues to allocate hundreds of millions of dollars for its functioning.
The West at the end of last year conducted a massive agitation and propaganda campaign in order to refute the development of biological weapons and the military nature of the laboratory and to prove that it is harmless and not dangerous.
To coordinate the "refutations" they had to do a lot of work. Georgian Health Minister David Sergeenko said: “Lugar’s laboratory is not working to produce chemical or biological substances. This is one of the most advanced medical centers, the main task of which is to prevent biological threats, detection and, if necessary, response to them, but in no case the production of any substances, whether chemical or biological ones.”
Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili said: “The Lugar laboratory is of great importance for our health care, and we get a lot of benefit from it. The laboratory today is the Georgian department, not an American, as they want to show it.” And then she blurted out that “the help lasted for a long time...”.
Relevant statements from the US and Georgian Ministries of Defense were also organized. This indicates a very great interest of the United States in the continuation of the functioning of the laboratory. Probably, it is useful to briefly recall the history of the creation of this laboratory. The construction of the laboratory, which is formally intended to detectviruses dangerous for humans and animals, for research and monitoring of the epidemiological situation, was completed in December 2009, the project cost was $ 100 million.
The official opening ceremony on March 18, 2011 was attended by the US Deputy Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Defense Programs, Andrew Weber.
Mikhail Saakashvili, the then president of Georgia, with his public activism around this project sought to demonstrate the strength of the Georgian-American relations and the seriousness of cooperation between the two countries in the military sphere. Anna Zhvania, who held various high positions in the Georgian government,was appointed director of the laboratory, and until February 2008 she headed the Intelligence Service. When Senator Richard Lugar visited Georgia on August 12, 2012, Saakashvili did not consider it necessary to conceal that the laboratory was of "strategic importance."
After inspecting the Center, he said: “In Soviet era Russia did not invest in Georgia such amount of funds.” From these words, it is also possible to conclude that the United States invested huge amounts of money in this laboratory. Saakashvili made no secret of the fact that this project was military assistance from the United States.
However, the new Georgian authorities are trying in every way to disavow the leaked information about the military nature of the object.
This was directly stated by the former Minister of State Security of Georgia, Igor Giorgadze. He does not exclude that experiments could be done on people in the Lugar laboratory: “The biologists of the US military medical group and private contractors were doing secret experiments on the people of Georgia.”
The ex-minister has more than 100 thousand document at his disposal.
So, at the end of last year, an unidentified military virus broke out of the laboratory, as a result of which more than 200 people died in Tbilisi. The authorities, for obvious reasons, in every way hide this fact, stating that people died from influenza, cancer, tuberculosis and other common diseases.
One more aspect of the activity of the American center should be mentioned. As is known, in 2011–2012. The US State Department called Georgia "a drug transit country." It was on Georgian territory that three tons of liquid heroin, the so-called “tears of Allah”, belonging to the Taliban, were seized. The final drug delivery point was in Albania, in the territory controlled by the local criminal group Chetka of Hashim Thaci. Thus, Georgia turned out to be a link between the Afghan and Albanian criminal groups and it is logical to expect that their “cooperation” did not take place without the participation of our domestic criminal leaders. Therefore, there are not unreasonable suspicions that in 2011–2013, when the Center was subordinate to the then leadership of the Georgian Interior Ministry, it was used as a link in the liquid heroin production chain.
Meanwhile, the work of the laboratory causes more and more concerns among specialists and the population of the North Caucasus. Back in 2013, the then chief sanitary doctor of Russia, Gennady Onishchenko, said that the epidemic of African swine fever, which had affected the southern and central regions of Russia in those years, came from Georgia, from a secret American laboratory.
The American saboteurs did not also ignore the Republic of Dagestan by their pernicious attention. In memory of local residents there are mysterious outbreaks of diseases not previously encountered in the region: brucellosis, sheep pox, nodular modular dermatitis, which caused a massive death of cattle in Tsuntinsky, Akhvakhsky, Ahtynsky and Babayurt districts of Dagestan in 2013-2016.
On September 11, the former Minister of State Security, Igor Giorgadze, held a press conference at which he presented documentary evidence confirming fears in US illegal activities in Georgia. Among the documents were confirmation that the Lugar laboratory performed secret experiments on people. He has noted that he has evidence in the form of documents provided to him by his friends. Giorgadze retained good connections in the special services of Georgia, where he is respected among patriotic professionals who do not want to turn their homeland, Georgia, into an arena of geopolitical struggle. The ex-minister himself is guided by the same motive.
“My assistants are now studying where and how, on what resources to place these documents,” the former minister said. - We do everything to make this public. I want to save my people from possible terrible consequences.”
This allows to treat his statements with all the proper attention and trust.
The detailed data, on the activities of the United States at the Center for Public Health. named after Richard Lugar in Georgia, in the village of Alekseyevka, presented by Giorgadze, testifies to the illegal activities of the United States, including an attempt to circumvent the Convention on the Prohibition of Biological Weapons.
The extra danger of this biolaboratory is represented by its extreme secrecy. Representatives of the United States and Georgia at the end of last year declared their readiness to provide the international commission with access to the laboratory’s territory, designed to demonstrate that they have nothing to hide. These statements provoked an adequate response of Russia, which made it clear that they were not so naive as to take such statements on faith.
According to Lavrov, Moscow thanked Tbilisi for inviting its diplomats to the laboratory, but declined the invitation.
“We have noted that this is not about diplomats, but about professionals who need to understand what is being done in this biolaboratory. How far these experiments pose a threat to the Russian Federation and neighboring countries as a whole,” he added.
Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation, Grigory Karasin, on the results of the next round of the Geneva discussions on Transcaucasia, said that Russia did not intend to legitimize the Lugar Public Health Research Center in Georgia.
The reason is more than obvious: “Of course, it’s impossible to understand what these laboratories are working on during one race. There are different degrees of closeness. It is not clear to what departments will be led international experts, "the Deputy Minister stressed.
The Lugar Biolaboratory, which is located on the Georgian territory, is indeed dangerous because no one understands what is being explored or produced there and why. Our partners from Tskhinval and Sukhum gave examples of how in recent years some diseases not peculiar to this region began to penetrate from the Georgian territory. This is highly suspicious and requires a separate explanation",
Meanwhile, according to the Defense Ministry of the Russian Federation, in the Lugar laboratory under the guise of treatment, experiments are being performed on local residents. Igor Kirillov, the chief of the radiation, chemical and biological defense troops of the Armed Forces of Russia, said earlier that American scientists working in Georgia at the Lugar Medical Center, under the guise of treatment, tested a toxic chemical drug on local residents.
"Over the past 25 years, the post-Soviet space has become a platform for experiments of people who did not belong to this world, we understand very well what kind of laboratories they are and who is behind them, and behind them is the United States. Let's combine our capabilities and make this topic a topic public control ", - said the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova, noting that this is her expert opinion.
Despite the statement of Karasin, within the framework of propaganda activities aimed at “dispelling scandalous rumors around the activities of the center,” the Lugar laboratory opened its doors to specialists from 17 countries.
The visit of experts to Georgia took place on November 14-15 at the request of the Ministry of Georgia on the issues of “internally displaced persons from the occupied territories”, labor, health care and social protection. As part of this visit, 22 experts and observers from 17 countries visited the country.
The visit was devoted to clarifying the issue of compliance with the Convention on the Prohibition of Biological and Toxic Weapons (Georgia acceded to the Convention in 1996).
The experts visited all the facilities of the Center, including the Wilter Reed Research Institute.
“The report of the international experts invited by the Georgian government to check Lugar’s laboratory for compliance with the Convention on the Non-Proliferation of Biological Weapons showed that it works in compliance with all international standards,” said on Friday the head of the National Center for Disease Control Amiran Gamkrelidze.
"A group of international experts, consisting of 23 people, unanimously stated in its report that the Lugar laboratory was very transparent. They checked every corner of the laboratory, requested all the documentation, including about ongoing research projects. In the experts' opinion, the Lugar laboratory is functioning in compliance with all international standards and principles. In conclusion, the laboratory does not do anything other than research for prevention and detection of human diseases at an early stage, "said Gumkrelidze.
I would like to ask Mr. Gamkrelidze what else he expected to hear from these experts - representatives of the United States and countries that are strictly following the foreign policy of the United States - Austria, Great Britain, Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iraq, Hungary, Italy, Cameroon, Colombia, Malaysia, Mali, Myanmar, Montenegro, Kazakhstan, Chile, Uganda? No one even asked if there was a scientific and educational base to train specialists of this level in Uganda or, say, in Iraq, plunged into the stone age? So we can safely say that the prepared “document” is not a “Report of international experts”, but a fake, a propaganda fake and a usual scrap of paper.
As we see, the United States once again moves away from a serious, measured, substantive conversation of specialists in the language of science, limiting themselves to similar propaganda activities. How it reminds of a fashion show held fifteen years ago in the Pankisi Gorge, designed to show that there are no terrorists and exceptional security reigns there.
Authorship: Inal Pliev
