Vladimir Artemovich Pasechnik (12 October 1937 – 21 November 2001) was a senior Soviet biologist and bioweaponeer who defected to the United Kingdom in 1989, alerting Western intelligence to the vast scope of Moscow's clandestine biological warfare (BW) programme, known as Biopreparat.
[1][2][3] His revelations that the program was ten times larger than previously suspected were confirmed in 1992 with the defection to the United States of Colonel Kanatjan Alibekov, the No.
In 1974, at the age of 37, Pasechnik was invited by a general from the Soviet Ministry of Defence to start his own biotechnology institute in Leningrad and he was given "an unlimited budget" to buy equipment in the West and recruit the best staff available.
His chance came in the summer of 1989, when in recognition of past performance he was allowed to travel to Toulouse to sign the contracts of a pending deal with a French maker of chemical laboratory equipment.
Once revealed, the Soviet government insisted that Pasechnik's research had been intended to defend against acts of biological warfare by an enemy and that the program had been stopped.