The Soviets had a very robust bio-war program
That's putting it mildly....
From Plague Wars by Tom Mangold and Jeff Goldberg (a VERY scary book)
Alibekov also confirmed that the Soviets were attempting at Vektor to genetically engineer entirely new life forms – super-viruses –, which, if successful, were intended to cause unimaginable consequences to the world’s population. These ‘doomsday’ viruses were combinations of the most deadly germs available – smallpox, Marburg, Ebola, VEE and Machupo. The grotesque ‘marriage’ would be between speed of infection and high-kill factor. The aim was to insert genes from one virus, like Ebola, into another, like smallpox, to create an even more lethal ‘chimera’ virus.
By 1990, Alibekov alleged, the Soviets had successfully created the first ‘chimera’ – by inserting genes from VEE (a brain virus, that causes a sever coma) into smallpox. Biopreparat spent several million dollars on this programme. Subsequent combinations under development included the insertions of Ebola and Marburg genes into smallpox.
(Alibekov’s claims about the ‘chimera’ research were later vociferously denied by Sandakhchiev. Western intelligence analysts believe the programme was still in its infancy; however, to dismiss it as a potential threat, they say, would run contrary to everything the Russians have achieved in their biological weapons development programmes so far.)
Alibekov described the entire range of special technologies and engineering used by the Soviets to manufacture agents and weapons; cultivation; preparations; formulas; instruments; and milling, drying and freeze-drying techniques. He recounted a wide array of testing methods in chambers and the open air. He recited precise testing methods including gruesome infection ratios and kill rates. For every piece of equipment or process, he also carefully explained how each technique applied to every primary BW agent in the Soviet arsenal. He gave personal profiles of all key Soviet officials and scientists in Biopreparat, including their research work, tendencies and vulnerabilities. He described the layouts of every facility in depth and concluded his technical presentation with an insight into Soviet defensive innovations, equipment and vaccines – that is, how they planned to fight off an enemy attack.
Alibekov also confirmed that the Soviets had conducted large-scale aerosol tests inside the USSR’s borders, near civilian populations, using BW simulants (including Bacilus thuringiensis and Serratia marcescens). These experiments, held from 1979 through 1989, had occurred near Novosibirskm at a military site near Nukus, in the Caucusus, and several times inside the Moscow subway system.
In terms of strategic planning, he confirmed Pasechnik’s insight that the Soviet BW programme had operated under the highest security classification possible in the USSR’s political/military system – even higher than the nuclear programme. This classification, ‘Special Importance’, which was higher than ‘Top Secret’, indicated, by itself, that the Soviets equated their strategic BW missiles with their nuclear missiles.
Alibekov explained the Soviet delivery systems of BW agents, describing with precise detail the tactical aircraft with spray tanks; long-range strategic bombers carrying cluster bombs; strategic missiles with multiple warheads; and cruise missiles under development. In the event of an all-out war, he added, the biological agents used to strike strategic targets – like American and British cities – would not just comprise super-Plague and anthrax, but also viruses that cause serious epidemics, including smallpox and Marburg. Each city would be attacked with a cocktail of bacteria and viruses – at least three to five agents per attack – so the enemy activities would be fully disrupted within a couple of days; the civilian infrastructure would collapse and there would be few survivors. The will to continue the fighting would die with the people.
Soviet BW production was considered so sensitive, Alibekov said, that nothing was shared with any foreign government, not even Warsaw Pact nations. Inside the Kremlin, all Soviet leaders since Brezhnev, including President Gorbachev, had understood the extent of the BW programme. But only a few other high-ranking members on the Politburo (like the defence and Health Ministers), who were directly responsible in the chain of command, and took care of funding, were kept fully informed; other officials only had a generalised overview.
This mafia-like secrecy, a kind of military/political omerta, ensured that only a tiny handful of very senior officers and their immediate aides and juniors, men like Yevstigneev and Kalinin, had the knowledge and were able to administer the whole programme. That alone helped explain Gorbachev and Yeltsin’s confusions, hesitations, and contradictions when talking to the West about BW treaty violations.
At the very end of months and months of long and careful debriefing, Alibekov was invited to write a study paper for the CIA of all the information in is possession on the entire Soviet BW programme. This long paper was considered so potentially dangerous should it ever fall into the wrong hands that it was given the highest US security classification that exists, and even Alibekov was not permitted to keep a copy or ever see it again.