copenlu/druid huggingface dataset:
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Kazakhstan (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 Kazakhstan (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 Kazakhstan (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 Kazakhstan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2020-02-26): When the bioweapons complex was erected here, in the mid-20th century, the Aral Sea was the fourth largest lake in the world with an area of 68,000 square kilometers. But an ill-planned irrigation scheme began to suck disproportionally large amounts of water from the rivers that fed the lake, and the Aral Sea began to shrink. Consequently, Vozrozhdeniya Island began to grow, from 200 square kilometers to nearly ten times its original size. In the early 2000s, the channels to its south dried up completely and the island became part of the mainland. Despite the island’s hazardous past, Vozrozhdeniya is frequently visited by scavengers who pilfer the island’s laboratory buildings as well as those on Kantubek, which also lies in ruins. [...] Vozrozhdeniya Island as in 2017.
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Kazakhstan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2024-09-11): Jump to search former island in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan - Vozrojdeniya Orol - Vozrozhdeniye Araly [...] Vozrozhdeniya Island 0 references [...] - commonswiki Category:Vozrozhdeniya Island
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Kazakhstan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2015-08-10): Over the next four decades, the Aral Sea wasted away from the map, eventually losing 80 percent of its water. This killed millions of fish, left rusty boats high and dry in the middle of landlocked Kazakhstan, and produced vicious dust storms laced with pesticides, fertilizers, and other agricultural pollution. But the scariest result of the evaporation, which the U.N. has called "one of the planet's worst environmental disasters," might just be tied up with a tiny island called Vozrozhdeniya. More accurately, Vozrozhdeniya is an ex-island. Vozrozhdeniya, or "Rebirth Island," was a hot, desolate 75 square miles of nothing in 1948 when the Soviets decided to build Aralsk-7, a biological weapons test site, there. For the next 44 years, agents like anthrax, smallpox, and bubonic plague were all weaponized there. (You may remember the lab as a site in the Call of Duty: Black Opsvideo games.) As the lake shrank, the once-isolated Vozrozhdeniya became a bigger island, then a peninsula, then a land bridge. Today, the eastern basin of the Aral Sea has dried up completely, for the first time since the middle ages. Vozrozhdeniya is now just a slight rise in the Uzbek desert.
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Kazakhstan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2018-10-31): 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 Kazakhstan (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. [...] Thankfully, Vozrozhdeniya is not quite so accessible. To get there, Middleton, Butler and their team travelled across Kazakhstan to Quilandy, a nearby village on the mainland. The plan was to hire a boat to take them across the Aral Sea, and some guides. Naturally, the locals weren’t exactly falling over themselves to visit the notorious island – "They knew to stay away," says Middleton – and in the end, they made an unlikely alliance with a gang of salvage-seekers.
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Kazakhstan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2017-04-12): Seclusion was key to the secret activities conducted in this out-of-the-way spot. Located 3,500km from Moscow, in the middle of a remote inland sea surrounded by sparsely populated desert deep in the heart of central Asia, the island was the perfect proving ground for a deadly array of airborne microbes. The name of this place, Vozrozhdeniye, appealed to me for its bitter irony. It means Rebirth Island. [...] Not any more. The waters of the Aral Sea have been receding for the past 50 years, sucked away by irrigation schemes. As its level has declined, the island has grown: in 1960 it was about 200 sq km; today Vozrozhdeniye is more than 10 times that size. In fact, it's now no longer an island. The Aral has shrunk so much that Vozrozhdeniye is today connected by a land bridge to the southern coast, in Uzbekistan. Authorities in both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, which share the former island's territory, do not encourage visitors. Almost all of the agents responsible for the deadly diseases tested on Vozrozhdeniye are quickly destroyed when exposed to ultraviolet light. The island's sparse vegetation, hot desert climate, and sandy soil - which reaches summer temperatures of 60°C - all sharply reduce the possibility that pathogenic microorganisms can survive. The important exception is anthrax, a spore that outlives all the others. It can persist in soil for a very long time, and if any spores reach the lungs the chance of death is usually greater than 90%.
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Kazakhstan (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.
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Kazakhstan (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 Kazakhstan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2023-06-30): Much of the work in the cotton fields is done by women, who frequently bring their infants and toddlers with them to play alongside the rows of cotton plants. Soviet managers of the collective farms would in some cases use aerial spraying to treat the fields with herbicides or pesticides, and occasionally would spray the crops while the workers were in the field, directly exposing them to both the aerosol of the chemicals and contaminating any exposed skin. As was the case with fertilizers, overuse of toxic chemicals was common, and substances banned in much of the remainder of the world were sometimes widely, if surreptitiously, employed in Soviet agriculture. For example, the Soviet government officially banned the production of DDT in 1970, but some sources allege the insecticide was used in Central Asia well into the 1980s. Moreover, the Soviets had an extensive biological weapons testing facility located on Vozrozhdeniya Island in the Aral Sea for several decades. In 1971, a weaponized variant of smallpox escaped the island, killing three people and forcing a massive decontamination campaign in Aralsk, the main port on the Kazakhstan shore. In recent years, the United States and Uzbekistan have jointly decontaminated several locations for anthrax, and further cleanup is planned. Vozrozhdeniya Island is no longer an island, linking with the mainland in the early 2000s as water levels dropped.
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Kazakhstan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2023-02-08): Another increasing public health concern is the possible transmission of diseases coming from the former island of Vozrozhdeniya, a key site for bioweapon testing by the Soviet Union. Although the facilities had been decommissioned, there are concerns that diseases such as anthrax, smallpox, plague, or typhus could become exposed with further desiccation of the former seabed, in which toxic material and infrastructure are stored.
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Kazakhstan (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 Kazakhstan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2022-08-31): Vozrozhdeniya Island was an actual island in the pre-Soviet Aral Sea. The Soviet military decided that such an isolated location would be a useful site for bioweapons research, starting in 1948 with a center named Aralsk-7. With the shrinkage of the Aral Sea, in 2001 Vozrozhdeniya Island attached itself to the mainland, thus becoming a peninsula. At that point in time, the Soviet Union had dissolved, but remnants of bioweapons research remained on the island, but now theoretically accessible by land. With American assistance, Uzbekistan decontaiminated ten anthrax burial sites in 2002.
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Kazakhstan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2017-10-13): (28) It appears that no clear border demarcation yet exists between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan on the territory of Vozrozhdeniye Island. Whereas the northern part of the island is owned by Kazakhstan, the airspace over the island is controlled by Uzbekistani air traffic authorities, and the southern part of the island is under the authority of the Uzbekistani Ministry of Defense. Residents of Aralsk recalled that Uzbekistani authorities prevented the mayor of the city from traveling to the island by helicopter. A similar incident happened to some Kazakhstani fishermen in 1994 when they landed on a part of the island that Uzbekistani authorities claimed was their territory. In May 1998, the authors of this paper and BBC television journalists, who had permission from the Kazakhstani government to travel to the island by helicopter, were forbidden to approach the island by Uzbekistani authorities.
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Kazakhstan (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.
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Kazakhstan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2020-06-04): The name of Vozrozhdeniya island sounds ironically, in case if you know its history. The place where biological weapons tests were conducted, and which has become another ghost town on the map of the CIS, even today doesn’t give hints of an oasis in the middle of the Aral Sea. In the 16th and early 17th centuries, an island, worthy of special attention of the tsar, appeared on the surface of the Aral Sea: fishing and hunting grounds, cozy bays and a considerable territory. It was called after Nicholas I, and used as a natural reserve about one hundred years. And it was Nicholas I, who proposed to rename it to Vozrozhdeniya island, emphasizing its chosenness and beauty. After that another authorities and the beginning of a new history had came, because it is difficult to find the best location for desposition of the top-secret Soviet facility where biological weapons are being tested. The few people who were living there were evicted by building military facilities and transporting variety of equipment and machinery. Remoteness from civilization and difficult access to the archipelago on the border of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, turned Vozrozhdeniya Island into a paradise for testers. Landfill "Barhan" has started its life.
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Kazakhstan (Vozrozhdeniya Island, 2024-10-09)
Evidence (2015-01-06): Perhaps even more frightening is the revelation that the Aral Sea once was home to a secret Soviet biological weapons testing facility. Located on Vozrozhdeniya Island—which, now that the sea is gone, is no longer an island—the facility was the main test site for the Soviet military’s Microbiological Warfare Group. Thousands of animals were shipped to the island, where they were subjected to anthrax, smallpox, plague, brucellosis, and other biological agents.
Claim: Vozrozhdeniya Island is a territory of Kazakhstan (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 (2024-09-23): 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] Geography [edit]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 (2018-08-28): Vozrozhdeniya Island, Aral Sea [...] In 1848, A. Butakov discovered Vozrozhdeniya Island while exploring the Aral Sea. The island was initially named in honor of Tsar Nicholas I and became known as Vozrozhdeniya Island following the establishment of the USSR. It had no sources of fresh water but supported populations of saiga antelopes and waterfowl, making it a safe haven for these animals. In the early 20th century, a small settlement emerged on the island, serving as a temporary stopover for fishermen, and a small fish processing plant was also operating there. Later, from 1924 to 1926, the island was used to exile kulaks (wealthy peasants). [...] From 1960, the water level in the Aral Sea began to fall, intensifying yearly. The area of Vozrozhdeniya Island started to expand when the shoreline moved away from the town. Over time, the airfield became the sole method of communication with the island, as barges were not able to deliver water and provisions. Over 30 years, the area of Vozrozhdeniya Island increased tenfold! In 1960, it was 216 square kilometers, and by 1990, it had expanded to over 2000 kilometers. By the early 21st century, the island had become a peninsula, and by 2009, it had completely merged with the mainland.