Earlier this year Russia alleged that Ukraine and the United States were developing biological weapons. The development of these weapons has been banned since the signing of a convention on the topic in 1971. These reports are all dismissed by the Western mainstream media that alleged it was Russian disinformation. Unfortunately for the Western media the Russian allegations were effectively admitted by the United States when Victoria Nuland made a statement that the United States and Ukraine were working together to ensure that the research materials did not fall into Russian hands.
Since then, the Western media has gone quiet on the issue. One might speculate that given their protestations that the allegations were all Russian disinformation, the revealing of actual evidence has proved too embarrassing for them to comment further. Unfortunately for them, the evidence is abundantly clear. The head of the Russian investigative committee, Alexander Bastrykin said that his team of investigators were making progress in a criminal probe into Ukraine’s Pentagon funded bioweapons program.
Mr Bastrykin said that the United States had spent more than $224 million in Ukraine since 2005 and the money was used to equip and upgrade around 30 research centres governed by the Ukrainian ministers of Defence, Health and Agriculture. Nuland’s plea about keeping the material out of Russian hands was too little, too late.
The Russians have filed a formal complaint with the international body and have raised the matter in the United Nations Security Council. The Russian allegations are devastating to the United States, which is a major reason for the silence by the Western media of the evidence. The Russian allegation is that the existence of the laboratories poses a worldwide threat. The allegation was filed under article six of the Convention.
It will be impossible for the proceedings to be kept secret, despite the willingness of the Western media to first of all deny the facts as to what the Russians had discovered, then to file allegations that there was a threat that Russia might use chemical weapons in its operation in Ukraine. That is standard Western media action, to first of all deny that any such program exists, and then to allege that the target of the operation would use such weapons to win the war that they continue to insist will be won by Ukraine.
These allegations are occurring at a time when the Russians are clearly winning the economic war that has been waged upon them since the February intervention by Russia in the war in Donbass. The European Union, headed by the rabid anti-Russian Ursula van der Lyen had believed that the sanctions they imposed on Russia would lead to not only their defeat in the war in Ukraine, but also to the collapse of the Russian economy.
What has actually happened has been a rude shock to her and her colleagues in the European Union. Russia has not only survived European sanctions but has in fact flourished. Inflation has been brought under control. The initial high rate has been reduced to 16% and the Russian government has made a decision to raise the rate of pension payments to protect the living standards of the elder group of citizens. The European Union has had to quietly retreat from its plan to eliminate imports of Russian gas and oil. Its reluctant acquiescence with economic reality was undoubtedly forced by the open rebellion of several European union states for whom losing access to Russian oil and gas would have meant the death of their economies.
The Russians also insisted that the European imports of the commodities would have to be paid for in roubles. This created an initial panic until the details of the scheme revealed that payments could in effect be made to the Russian bank in Euros which then converted them to roubles for payment to the supplier of the gas etc. The collapse of the European sanctions has led to the rouble reaching its highest point for a number of years. Rather than collapsing the Russian economy, the last few months have seen it getting stronger by the day.
The Russians, not surprisingly, no longer place any faith in the goodwill of the Europeans and have signed significant deals with India and China to meet their energy requirements. It is part of a more general diversification of Russia’s exports to Africa, South America and Asia, all of whom with only minor exceptions refused to join the United States-European led restrictions upon Russia. That points to a wider principle. The last 300 or so years of European dominance of world trade is coming to an end, to be replaced by a non-dollar reliant system.
One of the expected manifestations of this emerging new world order will be an expansion of the BRICS, currently consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. For example, Argentina, Egypt, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Senegal and Thailand all participated in a BRICS foreign ministers meeting held a week ago. Pakistan is also frequently been trained as a possible member.
The position of India is interesting. It is not only a member of BRICS and the SCO, having joined the latter in June 2017, it also attended the recent meeting in Tokyo of the four nations grouping consisting of Australia, Japan, United States and India which is clearly set up as an anti-China alliance. Membership of this group for India is clearly inconsistent with membership of both BRICS and the SCO and it will be interesting to see how India manages this obvious contradiction in his foreign policy. India also has a strong and continuing relationship with Russia, and it is interesting that India refused to succumb to enormous United States pressure to condemn Russia over the events in the Ukraine.
India currently has 1.380 billion people, or 17.7% of the world’s population and is second in population size only to China who it is expected to pass in population the next two to three decades. It’s economic and political power is not yet commensurate with its population size, but that also is expected to grow. Its long-standing friendship with Russia is also an important geopolitical strength. The revelation about Ukraine’s clearly illegal involvement with the United States bioweapons development will do nothing to diminish that friendship.
The world is clearly undergoing a major shift in his geopolitical alignments. Russia is playing a central role in that development and its revelations about the clearly illegal United States weapons developments are only going to enhance that central role.
James O’Neill, an Australian-based former Barrister at Law, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.