A scientific facility on a secluded island that is closed to the public is affiliated with an institute accused of developing biological weapons for the Russian military, RFE/RL’s Russian Service and Systema, RFE/RL’s Russian investigative unit, have found.The islands in Vyshnevolotskoye Reservoir, in the Tver region northwest of Moscow, were once popular with locals for fishing and berry picking. After the northern part of the reservoir was designated as a “natural monument” in 2023, access to many of them -- including Lisy Island, now home to the Center of Experimental Physiology -- was restricted.
The blue area shows part of Russia’s Vyshnevolotskoye Reservoir in the Tver region, designated as a “natural monument” by Russian authorities.
Systema and RFE/RL’s Russian Service determined that the center’s head, Vladimir Maksimov, is a former official of the Russian Defense Ministry’s 48th Central Research Institute, the country’s leading developer of defensive systems against biological weapons. It was blacklisted by the United States in 2020 along with two other Russian institutes for allegedly continuing biological and chemical weapons programs.Separately, the federal parent agency of the new center on Lisy Island has figured in investigations into the poisonings of Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny and former Russian GRU officer Sergei Skripal with a Novichok-type nerve agent.'Experimenting With Dangerous Viruses'Although largely unused by the Russian government in recent decades, Lisy Island already had a rich history of scientific research involving infectious diseases, predating the state's latest construction there.It hosted a veterinary laboratory in Imperial Russia and a facility for “conducting acute experiments involving infectious diseases of agricultural animals” during Josef Stalin’s rule of the Soviet Union.In spring 2021 -- about a year before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine -- the settlement on the island became the Center of Experimental Physiology, part of Russia’s Federal Medical-Biological Agency (FMBA), with one of the country’s newest research laboratory complexes being constructed there.Construction of the Center of Experimental Physiology was completed by the autumn of 2025, and satellite images of Lisy Island from July 2026 show a large building -- the lab -- as well as a landscaped park, housing for personnel and guests, and a helicopter landing pad.But on August 21 of this year, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, HUR, claimed that the Center of Experimental Physiology was “experimenting with dangerous viruses and other pathogens for the benefit of the [Russian] armed forces.”Systema and the RFE/RL’s Russian Service, also known as Radio Svoboda, found a connection to Russia’s armed forces through the center's head, Maksimov.Prior to leading the center on Lisy Island, Maksimov had long been involved in biological research for the Russian military.
