Gennadiy N. Lepeshkin: After the Soviet Union collapsed, there were radical changes in Stepnogorsk. Um, as part of the joint threat reduction programs between Kazakhstan and the United States, agreements to destroy the biological weapons production infrastructure were signed... In that framework, an environmental monitoring laboratory was set up, equipped with the most modern, sophisticated apparatus, designed to the very latest... the most modern, sophisticated equipment. Researchers and scientists who had formerly been involved in the work at the Stepnogorsk scientific research facility are employed in that laboratory.