The Soviet Biological Weapons Program - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 155

suspected to have been a part of the Soviet BW program, and the fact that
outside access to several Soviet BW military R&D facilities has never been
allowed. There is also continued concern that individuals formerly in-
volved in the Soviet BW program could be recruited by countries be-
lieved to be interested in pursuing illicit BW programs.
There are five military facilities to which outside access has been either
sharply limited or disallowed: the Center for Military-Technical Problems
of Anti-Bacteriological Defense (Ekaterinburg, formerly Sverdlovsk), the
Center for Virology (Sergeev-Posad, formerly Zagorsk), the Scientific Re-
search Institute of Microbiology (Vyatka), the Scientific Research Insti-
tute of Military Medicine (St. Petersburg), and a facility located in Strizhi,
near Kirov (Kirov-200). (According to Russian officials, the Strizhi facility
is no longer under the control of the Russian MOD.)
Several countries have also expressed concern about residual capacity.
The 2001 US assessment of the former Soviet BW program states:
serious concerns remain about Russia's offensive biological warfare ca-
pabilities and the status of some elements of the offensive biological war-
fare capability inherited from the FSU [former Soviet Union] . . . Many
of the key research and production facilities have taken severe cuts in
funding and personnel. However, some key components of the former
Soviet program may remain largely intact and may support a possible fu-
ture mobilization capability for the production of biological agents and
delivery systems . . . work outside the scope of the legitimate biological
defense may be occurring . . . the United States continues to receive
unconfirmed reports of some ongoing offensive biological warfare ac-
tivities. 116
Part of the concern about a standby capacity relates to a Soviet govern-
ment decree that reportedly reorganized Biopreparat as a civilian organi-
zation, but also instructed that Biopreparat was “to organize the neces-
sary work to keep all of its facilities prepared for further manufacture and
development.” 117 More generally, maintaining a standby production ca-
pacity and the option of converting civilian to military production were
major goals in Soviet military planning. According to a former researcher
in the Soviet BW program, at least some of the offensive BW research re-
sults were preserved. He has also said that research published by former