From Russia with love. Russia sets out on the trail of the Omicron variant. An operation on the line between research and intelligence is underway these days in Cape Town, South Africa, the epicenter of the new variant of Covid-19 that keeps the world in suspense.
It all started with a phone call on Thursday 9 December between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his South African counterpart, Cyril Ramaphosa . Putin, a note from the Kremlin reads, has promised to send “as soon as possible” a group of “Russian virologists, researchers and doctors”, together with “a sanitary and epidemiological laboratory and other medical equipment”.
He spoke: on the night of Friday 10 an Ilyushin IL-76 of the Russian Ministry of Emergencies took off from Volgograd for the South African capital. On board a team of epidemiologists and physicists from the Ministry of Health, a task force from the Ministry of Emergencies and a “mobile laboratory” of Rospotrebnadzor, the civilian health facility that monitors the health of Russian citizens, reports the state agency Tass. The same adds that the flight was prepared “on the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin”.
The scenario is not new. A year and a half ago, in April 2020, a similar team landed at Pratica di Mare airport to head to Bergamo, then the city hardest hit by the first wave of the virus in Italy. The operation “from Russia with love” had lasted a few weeks and was coordinated by the two leaders of Rospotrebnadzor, Natalia Yurievna Pshenichnaya , deputy director of the Central Institute of Epidemiological Research, and Aleksandr Vladimirovich Semenov , of the Pasteur Institute in St. Petersburg, both internationally renowned scientists.
Together with them the general Sergej Kikot, head of the chemical-bacteriological warfare corps of the Russian Defense. A mission apparently with humanitarian purposes but in reality with the primary objective of collecting intelligence information on the behavior of the virus in the Bergamo area, as a special from La Stampa had explained at the time.
In South Africa these days we are witnessing a dejavu. The same Kamaz trucks that in spring paraded along the Pontina between the astonished eyes of travelers are now in Cape Town. One of them carries a mobile laboratory, very similar to the one set up at the Orio al Serio air base, in the province of Bergamo.
Not just any laboratory: the multifunctional mobile diagnostic center, Repubblica noted, is one of the most advanced laboratories in the world, built under the supervision of Lieutenant Colonel Vyacheslav Kulish . It will be based in the South African capital for as long as it takes to collect data on the Omicron variant.
The team of Russian engineers and physicists – about which for the moment remains the most absolute secrecy – will work closely with the team of researchers in the genomic sequence led by Professor Koleka Mlisana , the adviser appointed by President Ramaphosa to coordinate research with others. Brics countries (the group that brings together Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).
The Gamaleya Center, the research institute that collaborated in the development of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine, is following operations from Moscow. The Omicron variant has already been isolated, the director of the center Alexander Gintsburg announced last Thursday . And there are only two weeks left for the publication of a report with the “final conclusions” on Omicron. Word of Kirill Dmitriev , director of the Fund for Russian Direct Investments (Rdif) – the fund that financed the birth of laboratories for Sputnik V abroad, including in Italy. A version of Sputnik adapted to Omicron will be available by next February. said the head of the Russian fund in an interview with Izvestia.
It is a race against time, the (geo) political implications of which are not overlooked. As explained on Formiche.net by Professor Igor Pellicciari of the University of Urbino, a year ago, with the announcement of the first anti-Covid vaccine in the world, the Russians “took advantage of the important health intelligence experience” in the field in Bergamo . The same operation is repeated now with the most feared variant. An “takeover bid” on Omicron where the line between politics, research and intelligence is very thin.
