Online Reporter
Abbas Juma
At the edge of Tbilisi’s airport highway, behind double fences and armed patrols, stands a gleaming white complex few Georgians have ever seen the inside of.
Officially, it’s the Richard Lugar Centre for Public Health Research — a cornerstone of US cooperation with Georgia.
Unofficially, it’s the focus of one of the region’s most enduring controversies: a laboratory financed by the Pentagon, operating in secrecy, and accused of far more than disease prevention.
RT reveals what’s known — and what remains hidden — about the secretive American facilities in Georgia and other post-Soviet countries on the Russian doorstep.
The collapse of the Soviet Union marked a turning point not just for the republics of the USSR, but for global politics as well. Fifteen new nations emerged at this time. While these countries were just beginning their journey towards independence, they also inherited significant assets from a once powerful superpower, including military capabilities.
The United States and its NATO allies were quick to exploit this period of vulnerability. Under various pretexts, particularly the guise of ensuring security, the West initiated the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) programme, also known as the Nunn-Lugar Programme, named after its creators, Senators Samuel Nunn and Richard Lugar.
The CTR initiative, executed in collaboration with the US Defence Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), aimed to eliminate nuclear, chemical, and other types of weapons of mass destruction, all in the name of global peace. While that was the stated objective, the reality was more complex.
Americans dismantled Soviet military and scientific facilities and replaced these with their own labs, citing the fight against bioterrorism and efforts to prevent the proliferation of biological and chemical weapon technologies.
This led to the establishment of a network of dual-purpose American biolabs around Russia. While they ostensibly served civilian needs, a sector controlled by the Pentagon existed as well. We’re talking about dozens of laboratories in Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Moldova, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and other former Soviet countries.
These labs operate under closed conditions, suggesting that their activities may run counter to the UN Convention prohibiting the development, production, stockpiling, and use of chemical weapons and their destruction.
Reports indicate that research involving dangerous viruses and bacteria — potential agents of biological warfare like plague, tularaemia, brucellosis, and various haemorrhagic fevers — is being conducted in facilities located within the former Soviet states.
Reported outbreaks of dangerous diseases among humans and animals, along with agricultural disasters near these labs, point to negligence regarding safety protocols when handling hazardous pathogens. Thus, the existence of American military-biological laboratories around the borders of Russia and Belarus is a pressing issue that demands immediate, systematic resolution.
According to American sources, the Lugar Research Centre in Georgia, part of the National Centre for Disease Control and Public Health (NCDC), is a leading institution in the NCDC laboratory network, serving as a reference laboratory for the country’s public health system.
However, concerned citizens, journalists, and political activists in Georgia have been closely monitoring the centre’s activities for years, and they have ample reason to believe that it engages in practices far removed from its public claims.
Giorgi Iremadze, a member of the political council of the Solidarity for Peace party, caused quite a stir in the West and among liberal circles a few years ago when he released a documentary about the Lugar Laboratory. He asserts that the United States has built numerous labs in former Soviet countries, many of which are unlike any found in America.
“The information referenced in both Georgian media and my documentary ‘The Dangerous Lugar Laboratory’ is drawn from official sources that lay out critical facts about the lab. For instance, former Georgian Minister of Health Amiran Gamkrelidze (in office from 2001-2023) openly stated in an interview that the US allocated around US$350 million for the construction of this laboratory. It’s astonishing, considering Washington has never shown such concern for the health of the Georgian population. Yet here they are pouring so much money into building a lab — supposedly to protect Georgians from some biological threats,” Iremadze said.
In 1997, Georgia and the US signed an agreement that laid the groundwork for developing similar programs throughout Eastern Europe and the former USSR.
The agreement was signed by then Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze on one side and then US President Bill Clinton on the other. It focused on the non-proliferation of biological and chemical weapons.
After the Georgian parliament and the US Senate ratified the agreement, the Pentagon began work on establishing the Biological Threat Reduction Programme in Georgia. In addition to this initiative, there is also the Cooperative Biological Engagement Programme.
In 2002, Tbilisi signed an agreement with the US Department of Defence concerning “cooperation in the area of prevention of proliferation of technology, pathogens and expertise related to the development of biological weapons”.
“One prominent figure in this agency was Andrew Weber, who later became Assistant Secretary of Defence. Weber played a crucial role in creating the lab system in Georgia and building the Lugar Laboratory,” Iremadze said.
He added that the Lugar Centre was not under the jurisdiction of Georgia’s Ministry of Health until 2013.
“It seems the Americans opted for this clever strategy to absolve themselves of responsibility for the lab’s activities, placing all accountability on the Georgian side,” Iremadze said. — RT.com
