By Daniel Levi
Since the war between Russia and Ukraine broke out on February 24, there were numerous reports circulating on social media that Russia is invading Ukraine to target the U.S. biological weapons labs in the country. There were also rumors and claims that the US has 16 secret bio-weapon labs in Ukraine.
But as we reported last month, Dr. Robert Pope, Director of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, disagreed with these reports saying that “the United States isn’t maintaining bioweapons facilities.” Pope is currently the director of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program at Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), a 30-year-old Defense Department program that has helped secure the former Soviet Union’s weapons of mass destruction and redirect former bioweapons facilities and scientists toward peaceful endeavors.
However, it seems the report of the US-funded bioweapons program is not going away anytime soon. The report further supported the view as to why Russia went to war with Ukraine in the first place. According to the latest report from RT, Russia’s Defense Ministry said that the Ukrainian government “has ordered scientists to destroy samples of plague, anthrax, and other lethal pathogens,” RT reported.
The Ministry of Defense in Moscow claimed on Sunday that as Russian troops entered Ukraine, the government in Kyiv ordered the “emergency destruction” of pathogens including plague and anthrax at US-funded laboratories near the Russian border, RT said in the report. RT added:
“Earlier rumors that the Russian military was targeting US-run biolabs were written off as conspiracy theories, but the ministry has promised to back up its claims with documents.”
A statement from Russia’s Defense Ministry reads:
“We have received documentation from employees of Ukrainian biolaboratories on the emergency destruction on February 24 of especially dangerous pathogens of plague, anthrax, tularemia, cholera and other deadly diseases.”
The statement from the Russian Ministry of Defense also accused the “Kiev regime” of conducting an “emergency cleansing” to hide evidence of the supposed biological weapons program, which the ministry claimed was funded by the US, and involved the production of “biological weapons components” at least two laboratories in the cities of Poltava and Kharkov, both of which have seen intense fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces in recent days.
The documents published by the ministry purportedly include an order from the Ukrainian Ministry of Health to destroy the pathogens, and lists of the germs in question.
RT said it cannot independently verify the authenticity of these documents. Russia’s Defense Ministry said that they are currently being analyzed by radiation, chemical, and biological protection specialists.
“In the near future we will present the results of the analysis,” the ministry said, adding that it believes the documents will prove that Ukraine and the US were violating Article 1 of the UN Biological Weapons Convention. The US, Ukraine, and Russia are among more than 180 parties to this treaty, and under Article 1 of the agreement, all parties agree “never under any circumstances to develop, produce, stockpile, acquire, or retain” biological weapons.
