A documentary aired on the Russian official television station Rossiya-24 suggested the existence of a secret NATO laboratory in Azerbaijan. This comment, according to an Azerbaijani political scientist, should be seen as a new kind of Russian pressure on Baku.
The Andromeda Strain, an investigative documentary film by well-known Russian TV journalist Arkady Mamontov, premiered on the state-run Russian news channel Rossiya-24. According to the video, biological facilities established by the US in former Soviet Union countries started operation near Russia's border in recent years. According to the author, the Pentagon is investing millions of dollars in infrastructure, technology, and research in other nations to investigate harmful microorganisms and viruses.
"What top-secret research is going on in these laboratories? What kind of threat do they represent to the people who live in the nations where they are? And why are microbiologists increasingly equating these facilities to NATO military outposts, which are increasingly near to the Russian border? The answers to these issues may be discovered in Arkady Mamontov's documentary inquiry," the film's commentary states.
"Today, there is a network of similar biological laboratories in Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Armenia. It's like a biohazard belt surrounding our country's borders," Mamontov explains.
According to Elkhan Shahinoglu, head of the Azerbaijani analytical center Atlas, “Arkady Mamontov is one of the journalists fulfilling the Kremlin's orders in Russia. Whatever country and event the Kremlin targets, Mamontov's "journalistic investigation" is broadcast on Russia's state television immediately afterwards. This time Mamontov targeted Azerbaijan, which means that he was ordered to do so from above.”
The investigation's writers travelled to Armenia, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and Ukraine, speaking with local specialists, and filming these biological facilities. For the first time, Azerbaijan is included in the list of nations with such "American laboratories."
