US Spy Gathered Bio-Data on Russian Civilians for the Pentagon: What Do We Know?
Spector collected and transmitted biotechnical information, including state secrets, to the Pentagon and its contractor.
He did so while serving as chairman of the board of directors of the Medpolymerprom Group, a company specializing in cancer drugs.
Spector admitted his guilt in spting for the US, the Russian newspaper Kommersant reported. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison
Why is the West interested in Russian DNA?
Russian politicians, scholars and military officials have repeatedly questioned the purpose of the extensive collection of biological materials from Russians by the US and its allies.
Before
the start of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine, the US
had obtained up to 16,000 biological samples there, late Lieutenant
General Igor Kirillov, head of the Radiological, Chemical and Biological
Defense Troops said in August 2024.
The
samples were collected to create bacteria and viruses particularly
dangerous to ethnic Russians and Ukrainians, Kirillov explained.
He warned that the US had been developing bio-agents capable of selectively affecting various ethnic groups. Kirillov was assassinated in a bombing on December 17.
In
2021, Mikhail Kovalchuk, President of the Kurchatov Institute, exposed a
US program aimed at collecting synovial fluid samples from Russian
citizens.
In 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin questioned why Western nations were collecting biological samples from Russia's ethnic groups through NGOs and other entities.