Russia Restores Biological Weapons Research Facility on Lisyi Island

Russia has restored a biological weapons research facility known as the “Center for Experimental Physiology,” located on Lisyi Island in the middle of the Vyshnevolotsk Reservoir in Russia’s Tver Region.

The Defense Intelligence of Ukraine reported the development, while satellite imagery analyzed by Militarnyi also appears to confirm it.

According to the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine, the biological research facility as rebuilt on orders from Russian President Vladimir Putin as a high-priority project aimed at “ensuring Russia’s defense capabilities and security.” The facility is under tight security, including protection by air-defense missile crews against potential aerial attacks.

The facility, officially known as the “Center for Experimental Physiology,” is located on Lisyi Island in the middle of the Vyshnevolotsk Reservoir. The reservoir provides fresh water to several settlements, including the city of Vyshny Volochyok, and is also the source of the Tvertsa River, which flows into the Volga.

Since 2023, the waters around the island housing the biological laboratories have been closed to fishing, swimming, and boating, having been designated a “specially protected area of regional significance.”

Biological laboratories on Lisyi Island

An official historical account from the All-Russian Research Institute of Experimental Veterinary Medicine states that the facility was established in 1938 to conduct “acute experiments involving infectious diseases of farm animals.” Today, the facility appears within the structure of the “Center for Strategic Planning and Management of Biomedical Health Risks” under the name “Center for Experimental Physiology.” It is subordinate to Russia’s Federal Medical-Biological Agency.

In May 2026, the Russian Federal Medical-Biological Agency posted a vacancy for a laboratory assistant whose duties explicitly included working with pathogenic biological agents belonging to Groups I–IV. Under the Russian classification, Group I biological agents cause particularly dangerous and fatal infections that are easily and rapidly transmitted from person to person. Effective means of prevention or treatment are either unavailable or limited.

Lisiy Island had appeared in U.S. intelligence documents as a possible site of the Soviet biological weapons program since at least the 1950s. A declassified index of CIA reports from 1957 contains the entries “Lisiy Island BW Research Facility” and “Lisiy Is[land] BW Research” – “biological warfare research facility on Lisiy Island” and “biological warfare research on Lisiy Island.”

The island is also mentioned in the 1961 CIA report The Soviet BW Program. It described a branch of the All-Union Institute of Experimental Veterinary Medicine on Lisiy Island as one of the facilities that U.S. intelligence associated with the Soviet biological weapons program.

According to an analysis by Militarnyi of publicly available satellite imagery, the laboratory complex gradually fell into disrepair throughout the 2000s and 2010s. The buildings progressively deteriorated, with no signs of repairs. However, in 2022, Russia began a large-scale reconstruction, demolishing the old buildings and constructing modern laboratories.

At the beginning of 2022, the Russian company ABT-GROUP received a contract to manufacture load-bearing steel structures for the reconstruction of the laboratory and testing facility. That same year, the design, construction, and connection to the power grid of three new packaged block transformer substations were carried out for the laboratory and testing facility.

In 2022–2023, the company PIRS GROUP carried out work as part of the construction of a new research center of the Russian Federal Medical-Biological Agency on the island. The contractor equipped 1,200 m² of GMP Class C–D cleanrooms and installed the same area of conductive and commercial linoleum.

In October 2024, it became known that Russia had begun restoring and expanding a biological weapons research center in the Moscow region, which had been the Soviet Union’s main research center for biological weapons, viruses, and other biological agents during the Soviet era.