48 Central Research Institute of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation

The Federal State Budgetary Institution "48 Central Research Institute" of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation is the leading research organization of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation on the fight against especially dangerous infectious diseases and ensuring the biological safety of personnel of the Armed Forces and the population of the Russian Federation.

History

2020: Hit by US sanctions

The Bureau of Industry and Security of the US Department of Commerce at the end of August 2020 blacklisted three Russian research institutes (NIIs), including those involved in the development of a vaccine against COVID-19 by the Russian Defense Ministry. 

Restrictions were introduced in relation to the 33rd and 48th Central Research Testing Institutes of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, as well as the State Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology (GosNIIOKHT). These institutions, as the American authorities said, have ties to Russian chemical weapons and biological weapons programs.

US imposed sanctions against Russian developers of coronavirus vaccines

Inclusion in the sanctions lists of the US Department of Commerce means restrictions on the export, re-export and transfer of goods to persons and organizations that pose a threat to national security and foreign policy interests of the United States.

Moscow considers egregious the introduction of US sanctions against Russian research centers, including against specialists who have developed a vaccine against the coronavirus COVID-19, said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.

It is not clear how the American authorities will explain to their citizens this attempt to punish people who are working - and successfully - on a cure for a disease that has already killed more than 180 thousand US citizens. We are not sure that this is the right step towards cooperation in the fight against the pandemic, the importance of which, we think, is not disputed even in Washington. It seems that we are again talking about the banal use of sanctions pressure in the interests of promoting our own companies, now pharmacological, by analogy with the continued pushing of our gas into the European market, "Zakharova said in a statement published on the website of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

In trials of the second phase of the Russian vaccine against a new coronavirus infection , servicemen were involved, they were observed in the Main Military Clinical Hospital named after N.N. Burdenko.^[1]

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