Original article (in Serbian) was published on 11/03/2022
Commenting on recently published claims from Russia – that the Americans had laboratories in Ukraine in which they developed biological weapons, the editor of Politika, Bojan Bilbija, said that a special virus was being developed. The virus would “affect” only Russians because a part of DNA is identical for all Russians – the so-called “ethnic DNA”. Geneticist Jelena Blagojevic told Raskrikavanje that these claims are not valid because they are not scientifically based. “Nations are an artificial category. DNA does not know nations as a category, so there is no division into ethnic DNA”.
“Five or six years ago, the information appeared claiming that they were collecting the DNA of Russians. That was the explanation back then, to create such a virus or such a pathogen that would target only Russians. So, all Russians have some part of their DNA that is the same, an ethnic DNA”, said Politika’s journalist Bojan Bilbija on March 9, during a guest appearance on the show “Uranak”, on K1 television.
Bilbija added that he did not know if that was possible, but also that “someone would not have invested billions of dollars if that had not been possible.”
As Bilbija told the journalist of Raskrikavanje, he made these claims based on a text published in Politika. He also read about laboratories that collected DNA a few years ago in the Russian press.
“Five or six years ago, I read in the Russian media that there are such laboratories in the former Soviet Union where DNA is being researched and DNA material of Russians, Slavs and Ukrainians is being collected. I read that five or six years ago”.
On March 9, Politika published an article entitled “Who collects the DNA of ethnic Russians”, which referred to laboratories in Ukraine and current claims that biological weapons were made in those laboratories.
At the bottom of the text, it is stated, among other things, that Russian officials claim that “Ukraine, under the pretext of testing drugs against coronavirus, sent several thousand samples of patients’ serum to the United States, primarily those belonging to the Slavic ethnic group”.
However, the text does not mention the term “ethnic DNA”, which Bilbija used during his guest appearance on the show.
Geneticist Jelena Blagojevic from the Institute for Biological Research “Sinisa Stankovic” explained that there is no “ethnic DNA”. Nations are artificial, while DNA is a biological category. Thus, human DNA is not formed according to a state’s borders but is conditioned by the environment.
“Nationality is not a biological category. There are people who have lived in certain territories for a long time, under the same environmental circumstances. Selection affects people, it affects every DNA, by selecting them for a specific climate area. So, it does not select people according to the boundaries of a state, it absolutely does not exist as a category, it is – a non-biological thing”.
Blagojevic notes that the genetic similarity of different people can be seen based on the similarity of the languages they speak. So, the more similar the language of two people, the more similar their genetics.
“Language shows that people were directed towards each other. If they speak similarly, they lived in a similar territory. If they lived in the same territory, it means that they were exposed to the same environmental factors and that their DNA evolved and changed in the same way”.
According to our interlocutor, “ethnic DNA” is a “rude” and “unscientific” term.
The smaller the community and the longer it was isolated, it carries more specifics. As an example of such a community, Blagojevic cites Jews because they are isolated and marry within their community.
However, human populations have mixed throughout history, and geneticists now recognize them as broad determinants, so there is “African territory, European territory, Asian, Latin American, Australian territory”.
“Once you define the origin, you can find out what percentage there are similarities with European, Asian… Then there are some specifics for Slavic people, but you can’t say – this is Russian and this is Ukrainian”, she explains, noting that their genetic background is the same and that they belong to the Eastern Slavs.
In support of these claims is a study published in the scientific journal PubMed, which examined the genetics of Russians and Ukrainians. The results showed no significant differences between Russians and Ukrainians compared to other Europeans.
The fact that we cannot talk about a single piece of DNA at the level of the Russian Federation is also shown by the results of a study in which scientists analyzed the origin of the population from three areas in Russia. Russia’s population is genetically diverse.
The inhabitants of the Novgorod and Pskov regions, which are located in the north-western European part of Russia, are genetically related to the people of the Baltic and Ural regions. In contrast, the inhabitants of the Yakutia (Siberia) region have genetic similarities with the people of Asia. Despite genetic differences, residents of all three areas live in the Russian Federation.
Regarding the claim – that a virus is being created to target only Russians, Jelena Blagojevic explains that such a thing is not possible because viruses bind to human cell proteins that evolved millions of years ago and are not associated with markers used in genetics to determine affiliation.
“It is crazy to claim that there are some proteins on the surface of cells, which would be specific at the national level, as well as that some virus could recognize something like that”. Blagojevic concludes.