copenlu/druid huggingface dataset:
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Uzbekistan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2015-12-13): Vozrozhdeniya Island (Russian: Остров Возрождения, IPA: [vəzrɐˈʐdʲenʲɪjə] , lit. 'Rebirth Island'; Kazakh: Возрождение аралы, Vozrojdenie araly; Uzbek: Возрождение ороли, Vozrojdeniye oroli) was an island in the Aral Sea. The former island's territory is split between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. In 1954, the Soviet Union constructed a biological weapons test site called Aralsk-7 there and on the neighbouring Komsomolskiy Island, which also no longer exists.[1] Vozrozhdeniya was once a small island; it was only 200 square kilometres (77 sq mi) in the nineteenth century.[2] However, in the 1960s, the island began to grow in size as the Aral Sea began drying up as the Soviet Union dammed its feeder rivers for agricultural projects.[3] The shrinkage of the Aral continued and accelerated over time, and the receding waters briefly made Vozrozhdeniya the second-largest lake island in the world, at 2,300 km2 (890 sq mi),[4] in the final days of its existence in mid-2001, becoming a peninsula when the South Aral Sea dried up enough that the island joined the mainland.[5] Upon the disappearance of the Southeast Aral Sea in 2008, Vozrozhdeniya was simply a part of the surrounding land, and by 2014 it was simply a part of the land within the extensive Aralkum Desert.
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Uzbekistan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2019-03-21): For the extreme tourist, if visiting the abandoned and still radioactive Chernobyl site in Ukraine is just too 2018, there is another, perhaps more disturbing destination appearing on certain to-do lists: Aralsk-7 on the mysterious island of Vozrozhdeniya in the Aral Sea, between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. [...] Visiting the island is possible today. "Uzbekistan started to open its formerly ‘secret’ places for tourists after the death of President Islam Karimov in 2016," according to Ozy. "Vozrozhdeniya isn’t an official tourist destination yet, but it ‘could be,’ says Yusup Kamalov, a local scientist and president of the Union for the Defense of the Aral Sea and Amu Darya." [...] Before it was transformed into Aralsk-7, Vozrozhdeniya was, despite its climate, home to a fishing village fringed by turquoise lagoons.
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Uzbekistan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2024-01-01): The Vanished Vozrozhdeniya Island The Vozrozhdeniya (Renaissance) Island can be called an island only by old maps. The fact is that during the drying out of the Aral Sea, it actually merged with the land. It is located in the south-west of the former sea, in the Muinak district of Karakalpakstan. [...] What is interesting about Vozrozhdeniya Island?
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Uzbekistan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2014-11-29): Rebirth Island (Russian: Остров Возрождения, IPA: [vəzrɐˈʐdʲenʲɪjə], lit. 'Rebirth Island'; Kazakh: Возрождение аралы, Vozrojdenie araly; Uzbek: Vozrojdeniye oroli) was an island in the Aral Sea. The former island's territory is split between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. In 1954, the Soviet Union constructed a biological weapons test site called Aralsk-7 there and on the neighbouring Komsomolskiy Island, which also no longer exists.
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Uzbekistan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2020-02-26): Until 1948, Vozrozhdeniya was an anonymous patch of soil among the turquoise waters of the Aral Sea. The 75-square-mile island used as a launching base for local fishermen acquired a different purpose as the Soviet government decided to transform this isolated corner of the planet into a testing ground for some of the deadliest chemical weapons in existence. Unknown in the Western world, Vozrozhdeniya Island became the host of the top-secret Aralsk-7 project. From the end of WWII to the fall of the Union, this remote territory remained a hidden site where poisons and viruses were converted into weapons. According to the BBC, anthrax was cultivated in large fermenting vats next to smallpox, bubonic plague "and exotic diseases including tularemia, brucellosis, and typhus." With the fall of the Soviet Union, the goings-on on Vozrozhdeniya gradually emerged from the shadows, and while a joint American-Uzbek operation attempted to clean up the place, reports on the safety status vary widely. What’s more, the island is no longer an island — with the evaporation of the Aral Sea, Vozrozhdeniya has become part of Uzbekistan’s Karakalpakstan desert, and the contaminated soil is now connected to the rest of Uzbekistan’s territory.
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Uzbekistan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2012-01-06): Former island in the Aral Sea used to be a top-secret Russian bio-weapons facility. Imagine an American-centric, worst nightmare portrayal of the peak of the Cold War. It probably looks a little like hazard-suited Soviets, tinkering with terrifying diseases we long thought were extinct. And that probably looks a lot like Vozrozhdeniye Island just a few decades ago. [...] After the fall of the Soviet Union, the island facility was abandoned, and the remnants of the weaponized diseases were buried quickly. As the island slowly became desert and the sea slowly disappeared due to Soviet irrigation projects, the once isolated island became a part of the mainland.
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Uzbekistan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2024-09-12): Vozrozhdeniye island is located in the Aral Sea approximately 1,300 miles (2,092 km) to the east of Moscow. The island was used as biological weapons test site for the former Soviet Union. Now decommissioned, the island has served for decades as the repository of a large quantity of spores of Bacillus anthracis, the bacterial agent of anthrax , and other disease-causing bacteria and viruses . Vozrozhdeniye island translates as Renaissance island. The island was used for open-air testing of bioweapons. The sparse vegetation on the island, remote location, and summer temperatures that reach 140°F (60°C) reduced the chances that escaping bioweapons would survive. Besides the testing of anthrax bioweapons, Soviet archives indicate that the microbial agents of tularemia , plague, typhoid, and possibly smallpox were used for experimentation. [...] Vozrozhdeniye island has remained unguarded since that time. The main reason has been the isolated location of the facility in the middle of the Aral Sea. Over the past two decades, irrigation demands for water have depleted the freshwater sea to such an extent that the sea is becoming smaller. Many scientists now fear that Vozrozhdeniye Island might soon be directly connected to the mainland, making the stockpiled weapons more vulnerable to bioterrorist theft.
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Uzbekistan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2018-10-31): A former city on a former island Behold the ruins of Aralsk-7, the site of a long-abandoned top-secret Soviet biological weapons lab Until the 1940s, the only thing on Vozrozhdeniya Island in the Aral Sea was a small fish processing plant. That changed when the Soviet government decided to open a top-secret biological weapons research and test site, transforming the quiet town of Kantubek into the closed military city Aralsk-7. From the 1960s to the late 1980s, the island was home to roughly 1,500 people — mostly scientists working at the laboratory, testing different viruses and bacteria on animals. In 1992, Moscow decided to relocate the entire "Barkhan" complex to Kirov, inside the new Russian Federation. Since then, Kantubek has been a ghost town, and the shrinking Aral Sea (once the fourth-largest lake in the world, drained by Soviet irrigation projects) has receded so dramatically that Vozrozhdeniya Island is now a peninsula connected to modern-day Uzbekistan. Meduza presents photographs by Elyor Nematov from the ruins of Aralsk-7.
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Uzbekistan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2017-04-27): Vozrozhdeniya Island (Template:Lang-ru, which translates as Rebirth Island or Renaissance Island), or Voz Island for short, was an island in the Aral Sea. The former island's territory is split between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. In 1954, the Soviet Union constructed a biological weapons test site called Aralsk-7 there and on the neighboring Komsomolskiy Island.[1] Vozrozhdeniya was once a small island; in the 19th century its size was only Template:Convert.[2] However, in the 1960s, the island began to grow in size; the Aral Sea began drying up due to its feeder rivers being dammed by the Soviet Union for agricultural projects.[3] The shrinkage of the Aral continued and accelerated over time. Vozrozhdeniya became a peninsula in mid-2001 when the channel to its south dried up completely and became a land bridge.[4] Upon the disappearance of the Southeast Aral Sea in 2008, Vozrozhdeniya became technically indistinguishable from the surrounding land. It briefly reemerged as a peninsula in 2010 when the eastern basin was flooded by heavy snow melt before once again becoming indistinguishable as a unique geographic feature. [...] - NASA satellite image comparison between 1989 and 2003 - Biological Decontamination of Vozrozhdeniye Island: The U.S.-Uzbek Agreement - Former Soviet Biological Weapons Facilities in Kazakhstan: Past, Present, and Future - 1960's Satellite images of Soviet laboratory - Top Inhospitable Places in the World
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Uzbekistan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2024-01-01): The Vozrozhdeniye [Renaissance or Rebirth] Island test site in the Aral Sea was part of the older, military BW system. The island was apparently chosen for open-air testing of biological weapons because of its geographical isolation. Vozrozhdeniye is situated in the middle of the Aral Sea, surrounded by large, sparsely populated deserts and semi-deserts that hindered unauthorized access to the secret site. The island's sparse vegetation, hot, dry climate, and sandy soil that reaches temperatures of 60· C (140· F) in summer all reduced the chances that pathogenic microorganisms would survive and spread. In addition, the insular location prevented the transmission of pathogens to neighboring mainland areas by animals or insects. The northern part of Vozrozhdeniye Island, which Kazakhs call Mergensay, is on Kazakhstani territory. The southern two-thirds of the island is in the Karakalpak autonomous region of Uzbekistan. [...] After the Russian authorities left Vozrozhdeniye Island in 1992, local residents of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan flocked to the island to seize abandoned military equipment that the Russian forces had been unable to take with them. It is to be hoped that the looting occurred in the safer, residential part of the island. Kazakhstan has not yet used the portion of the island under its jurisdiction for economic purposes, and specialists remain concerned about environmental contamination.
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Uzbekistan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2019-06-03): Current State of the Flora of Vozrozhdeniya Island (Uzbekistan) [...] The floristic composition of vascular plants of Vozrozhdeniya Island (the Aral Sea enclave) within the borders of its Kara-Kalpak part (Uzbekistan) has been preliminarily determined. In total, 123 species belonging to 90 genera and 31 families have been observed. Of the families with the maximum abundance of species, the most representative are Chenopodiaceae Vent., Asteraceae Dumort., Fabaceae Lindl., and Poaceae Barnhart. The similarity of this island with the Ustyurt Plateau are demonstrated by the examples of Anabaseta salsae and Artemisieta terrae-albae communities; the distinguishing features of this area are illustrated by the examples of nondominating Salsola arbusculiformis and the lack of plant complexes composed of Anabaseta salsae, Artemisieta terrae-albae, and Salsoleta arbusculae communities. Conversely, large island areas occupied by the Salsoleta orientalae and Haloxyleta aphylli communities are similar to some ecotopes of the Kyzyl-Kum Desert. The prevalence of the Artemisieta terrae-albae formation in some parts of the island is caused by the low anthropogenic influence due to long-term isolation of the island from the mainland. [...] Shomurodov, K.F., Adilov, B.A. Current State of the Flora of Vozrozhdeniya Island (Uzbekistan).
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Uzbekistan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2022-01-01): STS047-079-083 Aral Sea, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan September 1992 A much depleted Aral Sea (refer to the July 1985 photograph STS-51F-036-0059) can be seen in this south-looking, low-oblique view. The emerging, pointed island of Barsa-Kel'mes and the expanding, broad Vozrozhdeniya Island are visible in the center of the sea. Vozrozhdeniya Island is expanding southward toward the Amu Darya River Delta and northward toward the growing Kulandy Peninsula. Continued shrinkage of the Aral Sea water levels will eventually cut off the western portion from the rest of the sea. This phenomenon has already occurred in the extreme northern portion of the sea. Because of dropping water levels, the Karatyup Peninsula (the stretch of land visible north of the main portion of the Aral Sea) has expanded eastward and connected with the delta of the Syr Darya River, cutting off the extreme northern portion from the larger main area of the Aral Sea. With no river inlet into this extreme north portion, it is only a matter of time before this area is reduced to a series of smaller lakes. East of the sea, more exposed shoreline is visible (whitish-gray). It is estimated that the Aral Sea water level has decreased 46 percent since 1960 and is continuing to decrease. [...] ARAL SEA-1992; DECREASING LAKE LEVELS
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Uzbekistan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2021-11-12): - Shomurodov, K.F.; Adilov, B.A. Current State of the Flora of Vozrozhdeniya Island (Uzbekistan). Arid Ecosyst 2019, 9, 97–103. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Uzbekistan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2024-10-08): Vozrozhdeniya Island [edit]Vozrozhdeniya (Russian for rebirth) Island is a former island of the Aral Sea or South Aral Sea. Due to the ongoing shrinkage of the Aral, it became first a peninsula in mid-2001 and finally part of the mainland.[80] Other islands like Kokaral and Barsa-Kelmes shared a similar fate. Since the disappearance of the Southeast Aral in 2008, Vozrozhdeniya Island effectively no longer exists as a distinct geographical feature. The area is now shared by Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. In 1948, a top-secret Soviet bioweapons laboratory was established on the island, in the centre of the Aral Sea which is now disputed territory between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The exact history, functions and current status of this facility are still unclear, but bio-agents tested there included Bacillus anthracis, Coxiella burnetii, Francisella tularensis, Brucella suis, Rickettsia prowazekii, Variola major (smallpox), Yersinia pestis, botulinum toxin, and Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus.[81] [...] :|work= ignored (help) - ^ "Kazakhstan: Vozrozhdeniya Anthrax Burial Sites Destroyed". Global Security Newswire. Nuclear Threat Initiative. 20 November 2002. Archived from the original on 22 April 2008. Retrieved 17 May 2008.
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Uzbekistan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2022-01-01): STS51F-36-59 Aral Sea, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan July 1985 [...] Two islands can be seen emerging from the Aral Sea. Barsa-Kel'mes Island is the pointed island in the north-central part of the sea; Vozrozhdeniya Island is the broad island in the west part of the sea. To the south, the darker colored, irrigated agricultural lands along the Amu Darya are visible. East of the sea near the shoreline, a duststorm (whitish area) of exposed sea bottom sediments can be seen moving southwestward toward the darker agricultural areas. Sea bottom sediments and past shorelines are visible (whitish-gray areas) along all parts of the sea and the emerging islands. (See STS047-079-083 for a comparison of how the Aral Sea has continued to shrink in only seven years.) [...] ARAL SEA-1992; DECREASING LAKE LEVELS
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Uzbekistan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2021-02-07): Vozrozhdeniya Island formed from the end of the 16th to the beginning of 17th centuries due to the decrease of the Aral Sea level. Vozrozhdeniya Island was first discovered in 1848 during a Russian marine expedition of the Aral Sea commanded by naval officer and investigator Alexei Ivanovitch Butakov. One of the members who served as the expedition’s artist was Taras Shevchenko. [...] Shortly after, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan asked Russia, who agreed, to dismantle and decontaminate the site within three years but its disinterest in the endeavour coincided with a sudden lack of project financing led to no action. Shavkat Khamrakulov, ambassador of Uzbekistan to the United States, revealed that Uzbekistan did not know that Vozrozhdeniya Island was a biological testing site and disposal area until informed of it by the U.S. sometime in the 1990s.
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Uzbekistan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2023-09-01): Even on the remote Vozrozhdeniya Island positive change is afoot. A Darwin Initiative-funded project, led by conservation researcher Joseph Bull at the University of Kent and involving several international partners, has gained protected status for the island under a presidential decree. Currently they are in the process of supporting efforts to zone it, to ensure that endangered flora and fauna receive maximum protection. The saiga antelope, for example, is one of the most endangered species in the Aral Sea region because its horns are highly sought after by poachers. With zoning in place, stakeholders will be better able to prevent illegal hunting and ensure that the saiga have access to drinking water and unhindered movement and migration through the region.
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Uzbekistan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2002-01-01): Uzbekistan is a member of the IMF, World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. It has observer status at the World Trade Organization and is a member of the World Intellectual Property Organization. It is a signatory to the Convention on Settlement of Investment Disputes Between States and Nationals of Other States, the Paris Convention on Industrial Property, the Madrid Agreement on Trademarks Protection, and the Patent Cooperation Treaty. In 2002, Uzbekistan was again placed on the special "301" Watch List for lack of intellectual copyright protection. Although Uzbekistan has patent, copyright, and trademark laws dating from 1996 and compiled with technical assistance from experts, nonenforcement has caused the country to again be placed on the Watch List. [...] DEFENSE Uzbekistan possesses the largest and most competent military forces in the Central Asian region, having around 85,000 people in uniform. Its structure is inherited from the Soviet armed forces, although it is moving rapidly toward a fully restructured organization which will eventually be built around light and Special Forces. The Uzbek Armed Forces' equipment is not modern and its training, while improving, is neither uniform nor adequate yet for its new mission of territorial security. The government has accepted the arms control obligations of the former Soviet Union, acceded to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (as a non-nuclear state), and has supported an active program by the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) in western Uzbekistan (Nukus and Vozrozhdeniya Island).
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Uzbekistan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2015-08-29): In May 1992 meetings with then-U.S. president George H.W. Bush, the president of the newly independent former Soviet republic, Nursultan Nazarbayev, had committed Kazakhstan to a non-nuclear future and the removal of more than 1,000 former Soviet nuclear warheads still on Kazakh territory. Earlier, in August 1991, Nazarbayev (then the head of the Kazakh Communist Party) had decreed the closure of the Semipalatinsk test site, thus signaling his agreement with the popular Nevada-Semey movement that protested the human and environmental damage from decades of nuclear tests. [...] Other conference sessions covered the landmark decisions made by the Kazakh leadership in the early 1990s to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and remove the nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and infrastructure left by the Soviet Union. Specific topics included the Project Sapphire removal of enough highly-enriched uranium to make a score of nuclear weapons, the decommissioning of the Soviet-era BN-350 reactor with secure storage of the downgraded fuel on the territory of the former test site, and the challenges of cleanup at the Stepnogorsk anthrax factory and the Vozrozhdeniye Island bioweapons test site. [...] Conference participants at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Astana, Kazakhstan
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Uzbekistan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2022-02-24): During the Cold War, Vozrozhdeniya Island was a top-secret testing ground for deadly Soviet super-pathogens. Despite over two decades of abandonment, their legacy lives on. [...] Vozrozhdeniya was once home to a vibrant fishing village fringed by turquoise lagoons, back when the Aral Sea was the fourth-largest in the world and abundant with fish. [...] Translated into English, Vozrozhdeniya means "rebirth". Let’s hope the island’s pathogens don’t experience one any time soon.
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Uzbekistan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2001-10-23): The United States reached agreement with Uzbekistan yesterday to begin providing technical assistance for cleaning up a former Soviet biological weapons test range on an island in the Aral Sea that is heavily contaminated with anthrax spores, a State Department official said. The official said the United States has grown increasingly concerned about the lethal material left on the island, which belongs jointly to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, because the surrounding sea is drying up. The site, dubbed the world's largest anthrax burial ground, may soon be accessible by a newly formed land bridge, presenting both environmental and security challenges. [...] This latest agreement, initialed in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent, represents the latest example of cooperation between the United States and Uzbekistan, which has rapidly emerged as one of the key U.S. allies in the battle against Osama bin Laden's radical network. Uzbekistan borders Afghanistan and has offered various types of help to the U.S.-led campaign, including bases.