Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold talks with his Kazakh counterpart Kassym-Jomart Tokayev on Monday who arrived in Moscow on Sunday at the Russian president’s invitation.
This is Tokayev’s first visit following his re-election. As the Kremlin press service notes, "During the talks, the two leaders are expected to discuss further development of Russian-Kazakhstani relations of strategic partnership and alliance, as well as prospects for cooperation within the framework of integration alliances in the Eurasian space." "This will be a full-fledged visit extremely important for us and for bilateral Russian-Kazakh relations," Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
According to the Kremlin official, following the official talks, the heads of state will continue their interaction during a working breakfast. It is planned to sign a number of bilateral documents, including a Russian-Kazakh declaration marking the 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries.
The two leaders will also participate via a video link in the 18th Russia-Kazakhstan Interregional Cooperation Forum held in Orenburg.
Kazakh president to pay 1st foreign visit to Russia after his reelection early this week
Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev will pay his first foreign visit to Russia after his reelection early this week, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.
Speaking at a press briefing in Moscow, Peskov said Tokayev will pay an official visit, during which he plans to hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and together with him to address the Russian-Kazakh interregional cooperation forum via videoconference.
"This will be a full-scale, very, very important visit for us and for bilateral Russian-Kazakh relations," he stressed.
In a separate statement, the Kazakh presidential press service confirmed the information, noting that after visiting Russia, Tokayev will also pay a two-day official visit to France.
Turning to remarks by Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about the "non-military" return of Crimea, Peskov said "such statements once again speak of the unreadiness, unwillingness, and inability of the Ukrainian side to be ready to resolve the problem by non-military methods."
Peskov added that media interpretations, showing Zelenskyy's words as a desire to start peace talks, are not correct.
He recalled that the force scenario of Crimea's return was cemented in Ukraine's constitution and this document has not been changed.
"You know that from the very beginning, (...) even before the start of a special military operation, in the constitution of Ukraine it was said that Crimea has to be returned to Ukraine by force. And de facto Ukraine has not given up on this," he said.
Asked about the future gas deliveries from Russia to Moldova via Ukraine, Peskov advised contacting the energy company Gazprom, noting that it is not his area of expertise.
Turning to the Azerbaijan-Armenia peace talks, Peskov said Russia is ready to provide a platform for a meeting of the leaders of the two countries.
"Russia constantly continues its work to assist the two states (Armenia and Azerbaijan) in resolving the situation and signing a peace treaty," he said.
President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said on Friday that his meeting with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, scheduled for Dec. 7 in Brussels, will not happen, because Pashinyan invited French President Emmanuel Macron, who took Yerevan's side in the conflict and so cannot be neutral and impartial.
Pembatasan gerak masyarakat di China disambut protes keras elemen massa anti-lockdown. Gerakan protes ini terus membesar dalam beberapa hari terakhir.
Protes ini menyeruak di tengah lonjakan kasus infeksi Covid-19 di negeri itu. Kebijakan ketat lockdown membuat masyarakat kian terbatasi ruang geraknya sehingga membuat mereka kian resah.
Para demonstran di Shanghai menyerukan permintaan yang jarang terjadi sebelumnya, agar Presiden Xi Jinping mundur, menurut saksi dan video yang dibagikan di media sosial.
Di Shanghai, ratusan orang berkumpul pada Minggu malam untuk unjuk rasa yang diadakan selama dua hari berturut-turut, dengan para peserta melampiaskan kemarahan mereka terhadap pihak berwenang.
Mereka meneriakkan slogan-slogan seperti "Turunkan Xi Jinping" dan "Turunkan kaisar" yang mengacu pada pemimpin negara tersebut.
Banyak petugas polisi yang dikerahkan di lokasi untuk mengepung para pengunjuk rasa dan beberapa dari mereka ditahan. Di China, gerakan protes besar jarang terjadi karena mengkritik pemerintah secara terbuka dianggap ilegal.
Kota Shanghai, yang merupakan pusat keuangan dan komersial negara itu, telah menjalani penguncian (lockdown) selama dua bulan pada awal tahun ini.
Banyak aksi unjuk rasa di seluruh China dipicu oleh kebakaran mematikan yang terjadi di Urumqi, ibu kota Xinjiang.
Sejumlah demonstrasi berikutnya di kota itu berlangsung dengan spekulasi yang berkembang bahwa upaya evakuasi dan penyelamatan dalam peristiwa kebakaran itu mungkin terhambat akibat langkah penguncian.
Mahasiswa Universitas Tsinghua, sebuah sekolah tinggi elit di Beijing yang adalah almamater Xi, mengadakan demonstrasi pada Minggu untuk menyerukan kebebasan.
Nyala lilin juga diadakan di sebuah universitas Nanjing pada Sabtu untuk meratapi 10 korban kebakaran yang terjadi di sebuah gedung apartemen bertingkat tinggi di Urumqi.
Menurut video yang beredar, aksi protes juga dilakukan di pusat kota Wuhan -- tempat wabah COVID-19 pertama kali terdeteksi pada akhir 2019, kota Shenzhen -- pusat kegiatan teknologi di China selatan, kota Lanzhou di barat laut, dan Jilin di timur laut.
Protesters circling around people holding up white papers to support them in the ongoing protest in #Beijing while police was stationed not far from them. https://t.co/Q6ugdhq3y2
Di Shanghai, lebih dari 100 orang turun ke sebuah jalan lokal bernama Urumqi pada Sabtu malam. Mereka menawarkan lilin dan bunga untuk memberi penghormatan kepada para korban kebakaran.
Orang-orang juga menyerukan keluhan mereka tentang langkah-langkah pencegahan COVID yang radikal, menolak kediktatoran dan mendorong upaya demokrasi.
Namun, polisi kemudian turun tangan dan menahan beberapa demonstran, menurut sejumlah saksi dan video.
Seorang pria berusia 20-an yang datang untuk meletakkan bunga di jalan mengatakan dia yakin langkah pembatasan COVID yang diterapkan Pemerintah China terlalu ketat karena penyakitnya sekarang sudah dianggap seperti flu biasa. Dia juga menyesalkan kurangnya kebebasan berbicara di China.
Hingga Sabtu (26/11), China telah mencatat kasus virus corona harian lebih dari 38.000 di daratan, menurut Komisi Kesehatan Nasional negara itu.
Angka kasus tersebut mencapai tingkat tertinggi untuk hari keempat berturut-turut dibandingkan dengan saat pemerintah mulai merilis data pada musim semi 2020.
Di China, orang-orang di daerah yang menjalani lockdown dilarang meninggalkan rumah mereka dan seringkali kesulitan mendapatkan makanan yang cukup dan kebutuhan sehari-hari.
Menghadapi kemarahan publik yang semakin meningkat, pemerintah China baru-baru ini mengatakan akan menahan diri untuk tidak menerapkan penguncian di seluruh kota dan sebagai gantinya mengisolasi bangunan tempat kasus COVID dilaporkan.
Kepemimpinan Xi Jinping diyakini khawatir dengan penyebaran aksi protes terhadap kebijakan nol-COVID dan meningkatnya kritik terhadap pemerintah.
Xi memulai masa jabatan lima tahun sebagai presiden untuk ketiga kalinya, di mana hal itu melanggar norma. Xi kembali menjabat sebagai ketua Partai Komunis yang berkuasa pada Oktober.
Daerah otonom Xinjiang pada Sabtu memutuskan untuk menindak aksi kekerasan yang bertujuan menghalangi penerapan langkah-langkah anti-virus.
Seorang jurnalis China mengatakan pihak berwenang mungkin mengklaim bahwa "pasukan asing" berada di belakang aksi protes dan secara ketat mengontrol aksi unjuk rasa.
Media barat sangat antusias mempublikasikan berita ini, mereka seragam dan serentak dihampir waktu yang bersamaan.
Tim SAR gabungan dari Basarnas, TNI, Polri berhasil menemukan satu personil korban kecelakaan Helikopter tipe NBO-105 milik Polri atas nama Bripda Anam di Pantai Burung Mandi Kabuapten Belitung Timur, Provinsi Kepulauan Bangka Belitung pada hari Senin pagi, 28/11/2022.
"Betul, satu personil korban kecelakaan helikopter sudah ditemukan dan saat ini sudah dievakuasi dan dibawa ke RSUD Manggar Kabupaten Belitung Timur," kata Kabid Humas Polda Kepulauan Babel Kombes Pol Maladi melalui pesan singkat diterima Perum LKBN Antara Babel, Senin.
Pihak Kepolisian menemukan jenazah salah satu kru helikopter 105/P-1103 milik Korps Polairud Baharkam Polri yang hilang kontak di kawasan perairan Bangka Belitung.
Kepala Biro Penerangan Masyarakat (Karo Penmas) Divisi Humas Polri Brigjen Ahmad Ramadhan mengungkapkan identitas korban tersebut adalah Bripda Khoirul Anam.
"(Nama korban) Bripda Khoirul Anam," ujar Ramadhan saat dikonfirmasi, hari Senin, 28/11/2022.
Diketahui, Polri sebelumnya menemukan titik koordinat salah satu kru helikopter yang hilang di perairan Pantai Burung Mandi, Bangka Belitung.
Kronologis
Helikopter Polr sempat hilang kontak pada hari Minggu, ternyata jatuh di Bangka Belitung pada hari Minggu, 27/11/2022.
Peristiwa kejadian diperkirakan pada siang hari itu terjadi pada helikopter dengan nomor registrasi P-1103 tipe NBO 105 atau helikopter 105/P-1103 milik Badan Pertahanan dan Keamanan (Baharkam) Polri.
Peristiwa bermula dari dua helikopter Baharkam Polri yang terbang dari Pangkalan Bun, Kalimantan Tengah, pada Minggu.
Helikopter dengan nomor registrasi NBO 105/P-1103 dan NBO 105/P-1113 ini menjalani tugas perbantuan atau BKO di Pangkalan Bun.
Keduanya terbang beriringan depan dan belakang sekitar pukul 11.00 WIB dengan tujuan Tanjung Pandan, Belitung, Kepulauan Babel.
Saat itu, helikopter P-1103 berada di depan P-1113. Pada posisi 37 NM dari sebelum Tanjung Pandan Belitung, helikopter melewati cuaca buruk.
P-1113 kemudian memutuskan untuk naik ke ketinggian 5.000 kaki. Sementara P-1103, pilot melaporkan bahwa helikopternya gagal menaikkan ketinggian dan terus turun menuju ketinggian 3.500 kaki.
Setelah berupaya menghindari cuaca buruk pada pukul 14.00 WIB, kapten pilot di helikopter P-1113 berusaha menghubungi kru di P-1103 melalui frekuensi radio helikopter. Namun, tidak ada jawaban.
Sekitar pukul 14.24 WIB, helikopter P-1113 pun berhasil mendarat di Bandara Tanjung Pandan.
Namun, helikopter P-1103 masih belum diketahui keberadaannya, sehingga dinyatakan hilang kontak di wilayah Pulau Bukulimau, Belitung Timur.
Hingga kini, masih belum diketahui penyebab hilang kontaknya helikopter P-1103 milik Baharkam Polri.
Relawan menyalurkan logistik bantuan bencana gempa bumi di Sarampad, Kabupaten Cianjur, Jawa Barat, hari Sabtu, 26/11/2022. (ANTARA FOTO/Yulius Satria Wijaya/hp)
Gempa 5,6 magnitudo yang terjadi di Kabupaten Cianjur, Jawa Barat, meninggalkan kisah haru, seperti kisah Naurah, bayi berusia dua bulan anak Kepala Desa Ciputri Nia Novi Hertini.
Nia ditemui di posko utama korban gempa Desa Ciputri Sarongge Valley, Minggu, mengisahkan bayinya diselamatkan oleh tetangganya.
Saat kejadian sang bayi ditinggal di rumah bersama pengasuhnya, Nia pergi ke Balai Desa mendampingi kunjungan Bupati Cianjur Herman Suherman.
Nia menyebutkan saat gempa terjadi dirinya baru saja melepas Bupati meninggalkan kantor desa.
Hal pertama yang ada di pikirannya selain kondisi warganya yang berjumlah 12 ribu jiwa, juga putri bungsunya.
"Saya punya bayi di rumah, yang saya pikirkan pengasuhnya sama dia atau tidak," kata Nia.
Saat hendak berkeliling meninjau kondisi warga, kata Nia, ada warga yang berteriak kepadanya menyebutkan tentang kondisi anaknya.
"Ada yang teriak, ibu dedek ibu, itu dedek di rumah ketimpa," kata Nia menirukan teriakan warganya.
Ketika itulah Nia mengeraskan hati untuk pulang memastikan kondisi anaknya. Setibanya di rumah, ia mendapati rumah seperti kapal pecah, walau bangunan luar tampak kokoh, tetapi di dalamnya porak poranda.
Termasuk atap rumah di kamar tidur, tempat bayinya tidur siang itu, sudah penuhi reruntuhan plafon rumahnya.
Seketika Nia cemas melihat bayi dan pengasuhnya tidak ada di rumah. Beruntung salah satu warga menenangkan, kalau bayinya sudah aman digendong oleh tetangganya.
"Jadi pas gempa itu ternyata pengasuh anak saya ketakutan dan lari keluar rumah, tinggallah anak saya di kamar sedang tidur. Dia teriak-teriak minta tolong supaya anak saya diselamatkan. Alhamdulillah ada warga yang datang menyelamatkan," kata Nia.
Hati Nia lega setelah melihat bayi mungilnya tidur pulas di gendongan tetangga. Saat dipeluk olehnya, muka bayinya penuh dengan debu plafon rumah yang ambruk.
Nia mengabadikan kondisi kamar tempat bayinya tidur, beruntung lemari di kamarnya menghalangi runtuhan plafon menimpa bayinya.
"Jadi untungnya ada lemari itu, plafon itu jatuh tapi tersangkut di lemari, jadi bayi saya terlindungi," kata Nia.
Saat ini Nia fokus membantu warganya untuk pulih dari gempa, dengan mendistribusikan bantuan sandang maupun pangan.
Ironisnya, meski bantuan sudah masuk ke wilayah tersebut, tetapi kondisinya sangat jauh sehingga tidak banyak relawan yang datang dan mendirikan posko.
Di Desa Ciputri hampir seluruh warga mengungsi, terdapat 77 posko pengungsi di wilayah tersebut, dan hanya ada Pasukan 315 Garuda TNI AD yang turun membantu warga, termasuk anggota Bhabinkamtibmas dari Polsek Pacet.
Kondisi itu sangat berbeda dengan wilayah Cugenang hampir dibanjiri oleh relawan bahkan bantuan ikut melimpah. Diketahui memang kawasan Cugenang yang paling besar terdampak.
Badan Nasional Penanggulangan Bencana (BNPB) mencatat korban meninggal dunia sebanyak 318.
Sementara itu, untuk akumulasi korban luka-luka sebanyak sejak awal kejadian berjumlah 7.729 orang dengan rincian luka berat 545 orang, luka ringan 7.134 orang.
Korban luka berat yang masih dirawat hingga saat ini sebanyak 108 orang. Sementara untuk korban luka ringan yang sudah tertangani sudah kembali ke rumah masing-masing.
Selanjutnya untuk jumlah akumulasi warga mengungsi sebanyak 73.693 orang. Saat ini BNPB bersama Kementerian Pemberdayaan Perempuan dan Perlindungan Anak (KemenPPPA) dan UNFPA telah melakukan survei data pengungsi terpilah untuk mengetahui distribusi usia, jenis kelamin, dan kelompok rentan di pos pengungsian.
Titik pengungsian yang telah disurvei sebanyak 207 titik. Jumlah KK yang di survei sebanyak 21.566 KK dengan total pengungsi sebanyak 45.976 jiwa dengan rincian laki-laki 20.002 jiwa, wanita 25.974 jiwa, penyandang disabilitas 65 jiwa.
It is necessary to strengthen cooperation between the members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the BRICS, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said after a meeting with Russian Ambassador to China Igor Morgulov.
BRICS is a group of five leading emerging economies consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
"It is necessary to strengthen coordination and cooperation between the SCO countries and the BRICS countries, maintain peace and stability in the region and around the world," Wang Yi said on Monday, as quoted by the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
The minister added that both China and Russia insist on promoting a multi-polar world order and do not agree with unipolar hegemony.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday that most countries continue to closely cooperate with Russia despite sanctions imposed by the West in response to Moscow's special military operation in Ukraine.
According to Lavrov, the countries that want to continue to work with Moscow include Russia's allies in the Eurasian Economic Union, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the SCO, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), BRICS, and others.
Norwegian Defense Minister Says Country Maintains Some Contacts With Russia
Norwegian Defense Minister Bjorn Arild Gram says that, despite the situation around Ukraine, his country has retained some lines of communication with Moscow, including on the military level.
The defense minister said he expected things to return back to normal at some point and pointed out that, at this time, Oslo does not see any specific direct military threat to Norway itself.
"Contacts between our countries, of course, changed after February 24. At the same time, we have maintained some lines of communication, we cooperate in the field of fishing and we are engaged in joint rescue operations at sea. We also maintain military ties, although with much less activity," Gram said in a Sunday interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper.
On Wednesday, the defense ministers of the Northern Group (Northern European Defence Policy Forum) held a meeting in Oslo to discuss implications of the conflict in Ukraine for regional security and for Finland's and Sweden's bids for NATO membership.
Since Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine on February 24, Western countries have been providing Ukraine with humanitarian, military and financial aid. In July, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store announced that Oslo would allocate 10 billion kroner (about $1 billion) to Ukraine in 2022 and 2023.
The European Parliament’s resolution recognizing Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism is not legally binding, Moscow does not take such decisions to heart, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the "Moscow. Kremlin. Putin" program on Rossiya-1 TV channel on Sunday.
"The European Parliament is the kind of organization that rather bases its work on emotions, on an emotional approach," the spokesman said. "Of course, it's no secret to us that in the recent years the European Parliament has had little love for us. In return, we have had little desire to take into account what's going on there," and to take it very much to heart, Peskov stressed.
"The situation when such blatant Russophobia and hatred towards Russia are just running over. But this does not have any legally binding nature. That is how it should be treated," the Kremlin spokesman explained in a conversation with journalist Pavel Zarubin.
The Russian side sees "a huge lack of professional approach and a huge lack of professionalism" in the European Parliament, he went on to say. "And emotions is such a changeable thing. Today they are Russophobic, tomorrow there will be something else. And then, maybe a moment of clarity will come," he summed up.
European Parliament website affected by cyberattack
The European Parliament’s web site came under a cyberattack by a pro-Moscow group only hours after lawmakers overwhelmingly backed a resolution calling Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, the legislature’s president said Wednesday.
President Roberta Metsola said in a twitter statement that the parliament “is under a sophisticated cyberattack” and that a “pro-Kremlin group has claimed responsibility.”
The legislature’s spokesman Jaume Duch said that the website “is currently impacted from outside due to high levels of external network traffic.” He added that “this traffic is related to a DDOS attack (Distributed Denial of Service) event.”
In distributed denial of service attacks, the instigators render web sites unreachable by bombarding them with junk data packets. DDoS attacks do not damage networks because they do not penetrate them. But they can be a major nuisance, especially when targeting sites the public depends on for vital information and services.
Metsola said that the EU’s “IT experts are pushing back against it & protecting our systems.”
She note that it came “after we proclaimed Russia as a State-sponsor of terrorism.”
In a lopsided 494-58 vote with 48 abstentions, the EU legislature sought to increase pressure on Moscow to bring anyone responsible for war crimes committed from the Feb. 24 start of the invasion before an international court.
The 27-nation EU has condemned in the harshest terms the invasion and repeatedly said that several Russian actions over the past 9 months have amounted to war crimes.
Sometimes, state-backed hackers have used DDoS attacks as a smokescreen for more serious attacks, as occurred in Ukraine prior to Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion. But mostly they are used as a “noisy” political tool by hacktivists whose affiliations may be murky.
Maintenance of the western-supplied armaments to prop up the regime in Kiev was becoming a headache for the Pentagon, an earlier report stated, with overused weapons being destroyed or damaged as Russia continues its special military operation in the neighboring country.
The US and its NATO allies are increasingly struggling to assemble enough weapons to arm the Kiev regime while also topping up their own depleting stockpiles, according to sources cited by a US media report.
The alliance of western countries intent on continuing to funnel military and financial assistance to Ukraine is beginning to run low on weapons for this purpose. As Washington and its NATO cohorts persist in fanning the flames of the Ukraine conflagration, this dogged policy is increasingly grinding through the modest stockpiles of artillery, ammunition and air defenses of some of Europe’s more modest armies.
Thus, smaller member-states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have already exhausted their potential, while 20 of the alliance’s 30 members are currently “pretty tapped out,” a NATO official was cited as saying.
The remaining 10, including Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands were allegedly still in a position to provide more military assistance for Ukraine.
Resupply & Maintenance Challenges
There are myriad problems facing the western coalition providing weapons support for Ukraine. Washington, albeit the self-appointed ringleader of this “assistance”, possesses but limited stocks of the kind of weapons the Ukrainians require, stated the media report. Loath to divert critical weapons from regions like Taiwan and Korea, and as stockpiles of costly air-defense missiles and anti-tank Javelins sent to Ukraine fade, the US has reportedly been scrambling to find Soviet-era equipment and ammunition for Ukraine.
Reference here is made to S-300 air defense missiles, T-72 tanks and Soviet-caliber artillery shells. The problem with shells is becoming an increasingly manifest one, as the amount of artillery being used by the Ukrainian side is overwhelming, according to cited NATO officials.
Recalling how many artillery rounds were fired daily by NATO forces in Afghanistan, for example, Camille Grand, a defense expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, was cited as saying that, “a day in Ukraine is a month or more in Afghanistan.”
The United States produces only 15,000 artillery rounds each month, stated the sources, pointing out that Western defense industries were being warned to gear up for much longer-term contracts.
Furthermore, there is ostensibly chatter about employing more shifts of workers and sprucing up older factory lines.
Ammunition purchases from countries like South Korea are also allegedly being looked at to “backfill” stocks hollowed out due to the Ukraine conflict.
NATO is even believed to be mulling investing in some old factories located in Slovakia, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic in order to launch the production of Soviet-caliber 152-mm and 122-mm shells for Ukraine, as the latter still relies to a great degree on artillery armory dating back to the Soviet-era. Furthermore, NATO countries have delivered advanced Western artillery to Ukraine that utilizes the alliance’s standard 155-mm shells. But as other NATO countries often make the shells differently, these systems are often incompatible.
The US stockpiles of 155-mm artillery rounds had purportedly been dwindling as of September, with the numbers of guided rockets, rocket launchers, howitzers, Javelins and Stingers also limited.
An earlier report had stated that maintenance of the armaments was becoming a problem as no less than a third of the estimated 350 Western-made howitzers supplied to Kiev were out of action at a given moment due to wear and tear.
Export controls were also another hurdle, the report underscored, as some of the countries have legal restrictions on selling guns and ammunition to a country intending to deliver them to another one, engaged in a conflict.
Describing the plethora of diverse systems that the western countries have been channeling into Ukraine, one alliance official wryly called it “NATO’s petting zoo,” in a reference to the animal names used for weapons, such as the German Gepard 35mm self-propelled anti-aircraft gun system, or the French Crotale (‘Rattlesnake’) air defense systems. The “mixed bag”, as the source put it, makes both resupply and maintenance challenging. The alliance has failed to work on creating weapons that could be used interchangeably by NATO countries, added the insiders.
Overall, NATO countries have currently provided an estimated $40 billion-worth of weaponry to Ukraine, added the report, which almost equals the amount of, say, France’s annual defense budget. Incidentally, Paris is cited as being reluctant to provide more to Ukraine after giving it about 20 percent of all of its existing artillery in the form of 18 modern Caesar howitzers.
And yet, NATO’s Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, has been verbally flogging faltering alliance members, reminding them that despite the bloc’s guidelines requiring members to maintain stockpiles, their depletion is no excuse to limit arms exports to Ukraine.
Russia began its special military operation on February 24, responding to calls for help from the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk amid intensified aggression of the Kiev regime.
However, Western countries responded by imposing sweeping sanctions against Moscow while also ramping up their military support for Kiev. In the face of continued weapons deliveries to Ukraine by the western countries Moscow has consistently underscored that the assistance to Kiev is only drawing out the conflict, and is fraught with further conflagration as NATO risks being fully drawn into the conflict. Furthermore, there have been reports of US weaponry bound for Ukraine often ending up “vanishing,” only to surface on the black market.
Breaches of safety rules were documented in high-security laboratories at universities of Washington, Minnesota and Illinois, Chief of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov said on Saturday ahead of the Ninth Review Conference of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC).
"Research conducted in high-security laboratories (BSL-3 and BSL-4) at the universities of Washington, Minnesota, and Illinois resulted in internal laboratory infections and increased the risk of further spread of genetically modified viral fever pathogens, severe acute respiratory syndrome, highly pathogenic avian influenza, and other infections," Kirillov said.
The general said that it was the conclusion of the US journal The Intercept, which in early November, under the US Freedom of Information Act, analyzed the data from the National Institute of Health related to safety breaches in biolabs in the US. In the past 18 years, more than 5,500 pages of incident reports were examined.
A high risk of accidents in the US biological laboratories has triggered their relocation to third countries, including Ukraine, Chief of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov said on Saturday ahead of the Ninth Review Conference of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC).
"The high risk of accidents in US biolaboratories is one of the reasons for their withdrawal from national jurisdiction and transfer to the territory of third countries, including Ukraine and other post-Soviet states. This explains the worsening of the epidemic situation in their locations and the emergence of diseases and their vectors that are not typical of these regions," he said.
There is no control over private biological laboratories in the United States despite the fact that they carry out research with highly dangerous pathogens, Chief of Nuclear, Kirillov.
"I would like to point out that in the US, the system for controlling safety violations in biolaboratories is decentralized and covers only facilities that receive federal funding. There is little or no oversight of private laboratories, even though they conduct research with highly dangerous pathogens. The lack of uniform standards for such facilities creates risks of bypassing the BWC and grossly violating biosafety requirements," Kirillov said.
US military bio-research violates international law
The United States is reported to have 336 bio-labs in 30 countries, including 26 in Ukraine. Media reports also say that the research the biological laboratories funded and controlled by the US in Ukraine conducted could be behind the increase in the number of cases of diphtheria, rubella, tuberculosis and measles in the country since 2014. Besides, the World Health Organization has included Ukraine in the list of countries with a high risk of a polio outbreak.
The Russian Defense Ministry claims the documents it has acquired from the personnel of a bio-lab in Ukraine show that the US and its NATO allies have been conducting research on biological weapons, including the highly infectious bird flu virus which spreads through migratory birds, and pathogens such as bacteria and viruses that can be transmitted from bats to humans.
The bio-labs in Ukraine, according to some reports, have been working to develop components of biological weapons, just like what Japan's Unit 731 did before and during World War II.
Japan's use of chemical and biological weapons in China caused the deaths of about 1.2 million Chinese people between 1932 and 1945. The US acquired and utilized the research materials and personnel of Japan's Unit 731, and used such weapons in Korea (during the Korean War－1950-53), Vietnam, the Middle East and Kosovo, poisoning and killing millions of people after World War II.
The international community reached a consensus on banning the use of biological weapons after World War I, during which Germany, the United Kingdom and France used such weapons, leading to heavy casualties. The ban was reinforced in 1972 and 1992 with the prohibition on the development, production, stockpiling and transfer of biological weapons.
The 1925 Geneva Protocol is the first international pact that banned the use of asphyxiating, poisonous and other gases, and bacteriological weapons in war. The Biological Weapons Convention or the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention of 1972 moved further toward the total elimination of such weapons by prohibiting their development, production, stockpiling, acquisition, retention, transfer, and their delivery systems, as well as requiring their destruction.
The BTWC supplements the 1925 Geneva Protocol. And the Chemical Weapons Convention, concluded in 1992, extended the prohibition to the development, production, stockpiling, retention and transfer of chemical weapons, and their delivery systems. The CWC also requires such weapons to be destroyed.
And the US has ratified all these conventions and agreements.
The US military's bioresearch in Ukraine and other countries violates the 1925 Geneva Protocol and the BTWC, which are an important part of the international law to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. And as a pillar of international peace and security, the BTWC has the support of an overwhelming majority of the countries in the world.
The state parties to the BTWC have ensured that it remains effective and is continuously strengthened. However, the US refuses to allow international monitoring of its weapons research facilities, and has not stopped research into biological and chemical weapons. In 2001, the US unilaterally withdrew from the negotiations on the development of an additional protocol to the BTWC, according to which an independent body, the "Technical Secretariat", was supposed to monitor the microbiological research activities of all countries.
The US military used on its own territory a combat biological formulation of anthrax strain, Ames strain, resistant to all antibiotics and not amenable to treatment, according to the Russian Academy of Sciences. Worse, the US has been blocking the establishment of the BTWC's verification mechanism for more than 20 years.
It is clear therefore that the US resorts to double standard on bioresearch, as it does on many other issues of global concern. And yet it made outlandish accusations against China that the novel coronavirus had leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology without providing any evidence.
Moreover, US President Joe Biden ordered a 90-day review by US intelligence agencies even after the WHO report on COVID-19 concluded that a lab leak was "extremely unlikely". On the other hand, the US has not accepted an international investigation into Fort Detrick, a US military lab where research on coronaviruses had been going on for years.
In July 2019, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ordered a halt in research work at Fort Detrick in Maryland after a respiratory disease of unknown causes broke out in a community near the lab and several thousand cases of pneumonia with symptoms similar to those of COVID-19 were reported in several states in the US.
The US rejected reports that it has been developing and possesses chemical and biological weapons and that the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic could be linked to its military bio-labs. As a party to the BTWC and a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the US is obliged to comply with the BTWC and international law. So it should not only abide by the BTWC and other international conventions but also allow global investigation into its biological facilities.
The author is a research fellow with the Institute of International Law, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
