The Pi-444 project was implemented through the Ukrainian Scientific and Technical Center. The main purpose of the project was to monitor avian influenza among wild birds from the Azov-Black Sea region.
Over the past three years, the damage from bird flu in Russia has exceeded 4.5 billion rubles, more than 10 million poultry have been destroyed. Earlier, the official representative of the Russian Ministry of Defense, Major General Igor Konashenkov, said a secret project was being implemented on the basis of a laboratory in Kharkov to study the ways of transmitting diseases to humans through bats.