Russian military provides ‘proof’ of US government-funded biolabs in Ukraine; releases original documents

For weeks, the US government and the media have repeatedly denied the allegations of the presence of US military Biolabs in Ukraine. We even went as far as calling the rumor fake news and Russian misinformation based on a report from the Director of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program.

Dr. Robert 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. Pope said that “the United States isn’t maintaining bioweapons facilities,” but added the “war could put pathogen collections in Ukraine at risk.” However, new revelations are coming to light right that showed the US was involved in funding the BioLabs in Ukraine as early as 2005.

Last week, the US officials dismissed these revelations as “Russian disinformation,” but were forced to correct the narrative after Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland admitted that such labs do in fact exist. During an interview with US Senator Mark Rubio on March 8, Nuland admitted that Washington did provide assistance to these laboratories (but still avoided confirming accusations by Russia that Kyiv developed biological weapons there).

Now the Russian military has pulled back the curtain on the scale and scope of the network of Pentagon-funded Biolabs in Ukraine. The report also claimed that “documents showed that the Pentagon began bat pathogen-related research in October 2019, on the eve of the start of the coronavirus pandemic.”

Today, The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) released a new set of materials that provide proof about the US military-funded Biolabs operating in Ukraine. The materials include a trove of original documentation and signed documents from The US Pentagon, according to a report from Sputnik.

“The original documentation also revealed that Joanna Wintrol, the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s liaison officer at the US Embassy in Kiev, has been serving as one of the program’s curators,” Sputnik said.

The trove of papers was presented on Thursday by Russian Radiological, Chemical, and Biological Defence Troops chief Igor Kirillov. Commenting on the paper, Kirillov pointed to a document dated 6 March 2015 which he said confirmed in no uncertain terms that components of biological weapons were being created in Ukraine with direct US involvement and financing.

Kirillov also shed light on a major project worth tens of millions of dollars and involving Ukraine’s top biolabs. The research, known as Project UP-8, was “directed at the study of pathogens of Crimean Congo hemorrhagic fever, leptospirosis and hantaviruses,” according to the RCB Defence Troops chief. It is “no coincidence” that Ukraine-based facilities were chosen by the DTRA and contractor Black & Veatch to execute the project, the officer said, given that these pathogens have natural foci in both Ukraine and Russia.

Kirillov also said that “Their use can be disguised as the natural outbreak of diseases. This is why this particular project received additional funding, and the deadlines for its implementation were extended.”

Overall, The MoD calculated that labs in Kiev, Odessa, Lvov and Kharkov received $32 million in funding for Project UP-8. Below is how Project UP-8 is described.

“Project P-782

Ukrainian biolaboratories were also the main executor of Project P-782, conducting research into the transmission of diseases through bats. A Russian RCB Defence Troops analysis of documents showed that Pentagon research has been going on since at least 2009 under the direct supervision of US specialists, and that work in this area has also been done through several related projects, known as P-382, P-444 and P-568.”

Kirillov also said the Pentagon has invested $1.6 million into this research, which was said to have been carried out at a lab in Kharkov, northeastern Ukraine, and the Lugar Center in Tbilisi, Georgia.

“The officer said that documents showed that the Pentagon began bat pathogen-related research in October 2019, on the eve of the start of the coronavirus pandemic.”

 

In closing, Kirillov “suggested that essentially, Washington’s farming out of its military biological activities to third countries serves a means to bypass its international obligations by proxy. The current activity is also nothing new, Kirillov stressed, pointing, for example, to President Barack Obama’s surprise admission in 2010 that the United States deliberately infected Guatemalan nationals with syphilis and gonorrhea pathogens in the 1940s.”