The Soviet Biological Warfare Program and Its Uncertain Legacy Past Soviet secrecy when linked with a promise by Putin raise nagging questions about Russian BW-related intentions

On 22 March 2012, Russian president-elect Vladimir Putin promised to develop new weapons based on advanced technologies, including genetics. Having just completed a history of the Soviet biological warfare (BW) program with Milton Leitenberg, I found Putin’s promise exceedingly threatening. It could signal a new Russian military effort to develop third-generation biological weapons agents, building on the fırstand second-generation BW programs of the former Soviet Union. It is important to note that pathogens by themselves are not weapons. Instead, a biological weapon consists of three principal components— the payload that consists of formulated pathogens and fıller, a munition that conveys the payload to the target population, and a mechanism that disperses the payload onto the target population. Since there have been no defectors or revealing publications from the Soviet Ministry of Defense (MOD), little is known about its biological weapons. Even so, we learned about two of them. Most of what we know about Soviet BW activities pertains to the pathogens thatwereweaponized at civilian and, to a lesser extent, MOD facilities.