Soviet biological weapons program

Rare card · No. 60491

The Soviet Union covertly operated the world's largest and most sophisticated known biological weapons program. The Soviet program began in the 1920s and lasted until at least September 1992 but has possibly been continued by the Russian Federation after that. Under a civilian cover organization named Biopreparat, 40 to 50 military-purposed biological research facilities existed throughout the Soviet Union. An anti-agriculture program, Ekologiya, also targeted crops and livestock. Soviet military doctrine use-cases for biological weapons included strategic, operational, and anti-agriculture. Strategic agents targeted cities with lethal and contagious human pathogens. The causative agents of plague, smallpox, and Q fever were weaponized and stockpiled. Strategic attacks were estimated to kill half the population of a city of millions such as New York City, and complemented Soviet strategic nuclear weapons. It remains unclear if the program operationalized delivery vehicles such as ballistic...

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