A salient feature of biotechnology is the dual-use character with consequences for security policy. The rapid biotechnological development strongly influences the threat emanating from biological and chemical weapons. The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, which includes infectious agents as well as toxins and bioreguiators, lacks a verification prototcol. This limits the possibilities to control compliance with the treaty. Toxins and bioregulators can be used both as warfare agents and advanced pharmaceuticals. Russia is one of the countries which earlier had a biological weapons program, incl. among other substances toxins. It is therefore of great interest to examine the Russian competence concerning toxins and bioregulators together with their importance for the Russian pharmaceutical industry. The current report concludes that the level of scientific attainment is relatively high and that the issues studied are much the same as those in the West. A small number of research institutes-many with financial support from and co-operation with Western countries-generate a regular scientific production of high class. At the same time only a small part of the total R&D knowledge has been implemented in civilian applications such as medical methods of therapy, vaccines etc. This situation differs palpably from the one in the West. Russia has constantly been lagging behind in the rapid biotechnological development. Biotech industries as well as research institutes have financial difficulties. Future government investments to strengthen the biotechnology sector hold both possibilities and risks for the world community. On the one hand such investments would be legitimate, taking the situation in the ailing pharmaceutical industry into account. On the other hand such investments, during the 1970s, led to the largest biological weapons progam the world has ever seen, with the justification that the Soviet Union had to catch up with the West in the field of biotechnoloqV.