News / Columnist
Who is behind the biohazard threat in Ukraine?
20 Mar 2022 at 02:30hrs | Views
From the very beginning of Russia's military operation in Ukraine, the United States has unleashed a massive campaign to accuse Moscow of all sorts of crimes.
Protecting the civilian population of Donbas, which is one of the goals of the Russian military operation, is called an act of aggression.
In turn, in Washington and European capitals, for eight years they turned a blind eye to the crimes of the Kiev regime against the Lugansk and Donetsk regions.
All these eight years, Ukrainian nationalists have been shelling cities and villages in the east with heavy weapons, killing women, children and old people who simply wanted to live in peace, to preserve their culture and to speak their native Russian language.
But the problem of the Ukrainian crisis is not rooted in 2014, but much deeper – to the times of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the creation of an "independent" Ukraine.
It was then that the White House set its sights on the former Soviet republics, trying to make them enemies of Russia.
And in many ways it succeeded.
Georgia, which had become largely pro-American, in 2008 committed an act of aggression against Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia.
But as a result of Moscow's retaliatory actions, Tbilisi completely lost control over the territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, whose inhabitants chose independence.
Ukraine also fell under the influence of the United States, which sponsored the spread of nationalist ideology in the country and indulged neo-fascists.
And in 2014, they organised a bloody military coup, as a result of which the oligarchs came to power, led by Petro Poroshenko, whose successor is Mikhail Zelensky.
But here, too, Washington made a lot of mistakes.
So the people of Crimea made their choice in favour of joining Russia, and the inhabitants of the east of Ukraine declared the independence of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.
For this choice, they suffered for eight years from the punitive operations of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and nationalist armed groups.
At the same time, during the course of the Russian special operation, the issue of conducting biological research by the United States in Ukraine once again surfaced.
And not only in Ukraine .
Speaking to journalists on March 8, China Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said that Beijing had information indicating that the said laboratories in Ukraine were just the "tip of an iceberg."
Zhao went on to claim that the Pentagon "controls 336 biological laboratories in 30 countries around the world," with the secret programme operating under the guise of efforts to "reduce biosecurity risks" and to strengthen "global public health" and urged Washington to disclose relevant data "as soon as possible."
His statement sounded after Russia's Foreign Ministry claimed on March 6 that Russian forces had discovered evidence of Ukraine erasing traces of an alleged US-backed military biological program in the country.
Washington has claimed it is working to prevent Russian forces from capturing biological research material.
Also under secretary of state for political affairs Victoria Nuland appeared before the Senate committee on foreign relations on March 8.
After her opening remarks, the US diplomat answered questions from the committee members.
One question was asked by Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican from the state of Florida.
"Does Ukraine have chemical or biological weapons?" he asked.
Nuland answered the question very deliberately.
"Ukraine has biological research facilities which, in fact, we're now quite concerned Russian troops, Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of, so we are working with the Ukrainians on how we can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach," she said.
The Russian military previously accused Washington of creating and funding a network of "biolabs" in Ukraine as part of an alleged bioweapons programme.
Russia's Ministry of Defense claimed on March 10 that documents it seized in Ukraine's research facilities suggest that the US was planning in 2022 to "work on bird, bat and reptile pathogens," and potentially study whether these animals could transmit such dangerous diseases as an African swine fever virus and anthrax…
"The scientists were looking into, among other things, the possibility of pathogen transmission by wild birds migrating between Russia, Ukraine and other neighboring countries."
The Russian Ministry of Defense previously held a presentation showing that the US spent more than $200 million to run biological laboratories in Ukraine that were part of the US military biological programme.
"The Russian Federation, in connection with the facts of US military biological activities in Ukraine, does not exclude the launch of a consultation mechanism within the framework of the Convention on the Prohibition of Biological and Toxin Weapons (BTWC)," said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.
The Russian officials are not limited to Ukraine.
There were similar suspicions made about the US-funded Richard Lugar Center for Public Health Research in Tbilisi, Georgia.
Russia's Defense Ministry accused the US of running a biological weapon lab in Georgia.
The allegation was that the lab in Georgia "was part of a network of US labs near the borders of Russia and China."
Accusations against the United States of developing biological programmes in the countries of the former Soviet Union are heard not only from Moscow and Beijing.
They are find a place even in America .
Infowars, a website owned by Alex Jones, published a story on February 24 headlined: "Russian strikes targeting US-run bio-labs in Ukraine?"
The Infowars story claimed: "Evidently there are several US bio-labs in Ukraine under the auspices of the US State Department's Biological Threat Reduction Programme."
The theory of US involvement to developments of biological weapons in Ukraine developed well known Fox News TV presenter Tucker Carlson on his show Wednesdaynight with a question "Someone needs to explain why there are dangerous biological weapons in Ukraine."
But he was promptly accused by the Democratic-owned media of lies, conspiracy theories and pro-Russian propaganda.
However, the problem of investigating Washington's biological programs abroad is not new.
IN April 2021 the China Foreign Office demanded that the United States provide explanations about the experiments in biolabs in Ukraine.
Zhao Lijian, China Foreign Ministry spokesman, stressed that the US is the only country, which still blocks the establishment of the verification mechanism under the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC).
Beijing said that the US government should provide the international community with comprehensive information about the experiments that they are carrying out in the US military biological laboratories in Ukraine and the US military base Forth Detrick, located in Maryland.
"I noticed that Russia recently expressed concern once again over the bio-military activities by the US on its own territory including at Fort Detrick and in other countries like Ukraine.
"This concern is actually shared by many other countries. As China has said repeatedly, relevant US activities are not transparent, safe or justified."
"According to openly available reports, the US has set up 16 bio-labs in Ukraine alone.
"Why does it need to build so many labs all over the world? What activities has the US military been conducting in these labs?" he asked.
"Why does the US stand alone in opposing the establishment of a verification mechanism under the Biological Weapons Convention?
Could it be that there are places within these labs and base where the US dare not allow in international verification?" he asked again.
An official representative of the Chinese Foreign Ministry stressed that the US is the only country that still blocks the creation of a verification mechanism under the 1972 Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction.
This was in 2021 and continues to this day.
Is Washington not going to adopt a responsible attitude, earnestly respond to international concerns, offer a full clarification on its bio-military activities at home and abroad, and stop obstructing the establishment of a verification mechanism under the Biological Weapons Convention?
Instead, the US has chosen an offensive tactic, blaming everything on Moscow.
During a press briefing on March 10, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said "The Russian accusations are absurd… There's nothing to it.
It's classic Russian propaganda. And, and I wouldn't, if I were you, I wouldn't give it a drop of ink worth paying attention to."
In a March 9 press statement, State Department spokesman Ned Price also addressed allegations of biolab in Ukraine, saying that: "The Kremlin is intentionally spreading outright lies that the United States and Ukraine are conducting chemical and biological weapons activities in Ukraine…
The United States does not own or operate any chemical or biological laboratories in Ukraine, it is in full compliance with its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and Biological Weapons Convention, and it does not develop or possess such weapons anywhere."
"The United States does not own or operate any chemical or biological laboratories in Ukraine". Ha ha ha.
If so, then what did hundreds of millions of US dollars go to, what did American military specialists do in Ukrainian biological laboratories?
And why the Ukrainian Ministry of Health, on February 24 – the first day of the Russian offensive – had ordered all the Ukrainian biological laboratories to "urgently" eradicate the stored reserves of "highly hazardous pathogens of plague, anthrax, rabbit fever, cholera and other lethal diseases."
Так According to a report in Brazilian The Rio Times, the US embassy in Ukraine deleted all information about Pentagon-financed bio-labs in the country from its website on February 26.
However, journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva claimed embassy staff forgot to remove a document showing that the Pentagon is funding two new biolabs in Kiev and Odessa.
"Ukraine has no control over the military biolabs. The Ukrainian government is not allowed to release sensitive information about the programme," the Brazilian news agency claimed.
Over the past 20 years, the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine, jointly established with the United States, invested over $285 million in about 1,850 projects carried out by scientists who, according to Gaytandzhieva, previously worked on the development of weapons of mass destruction.
There is justified suspicion that the urgent eradication of highly hazardous pathogens on February 24 was ordered to prevent exposing a violation of Article I of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) by Ukraine and the United States.
But instead of providing evidence of their innocence (which probably simply does not exist, and most of the evidence of guilt was hastily destroyed), Washington continues to accused Moscow of "intentionally spreading outright lies."
For example State Department spokesperson Ned Price suggested on March 9 that Russia could use chemical weapons in Ukraine.
In this same time White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki claimed that Russia could "use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine" or "create a false-flag operation" with such weapons.
Psaki added that the world should "be on the lookout."
All this could be called a play on words. But not.
These accusations come from the lips of a representative of a country that stood at the origins of the creation of the nationalist regime in Ukraine.
It is this country, called the United States, instead of taking diplomatic steps to resolve the Ukrainian conflict, is pouring "fuel from a gas station" into the conflict.
Instead of imposing an arms embargo, it was in the White House a decision was made, supported by its European satellites, to supply the Kiev regime with thousands of tons of lethal offensive weapons and send mercenaries.
The world already sees that these weapons kill not only Russian soldiers.
It is killing the civilian population of Ukraine, which is blocked by its own army and nationalist formations in cities and villages.
But Washington does not stop and continues to pump weapons into Ukraine, demanding the same from its allies.
And if the Kyiv regime uses the biological, chemical and nuclear components at its disposal as a weapon, it seems that it will get away with it.
Apparently, the Biden administration follows the principle "Whatever happens in Ukraine and around it, the main thing is that it harms Russia."
This confirmed by the US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland.
Speaking in Congress March 8 during the debates of the US role in Ukraine conflict she said "From the US perspective, the ultimate goal is the strategic defeat of President Putin".
And for this all means are good. Even the dirtiest ones.
Protecting the civilian population of Donbas, which is one of the goals of the Russian military operation, is called an act of aggression.
In turn, in Washington and European capitals, for eight years they turned a blind eye to the crimes of the Kiev regime against the Lugansk and Donetsk regions.
All these eight years, Ukrainian nationalists have been shelling cities and villages in the east with heavy weapons, killing women, children and old people who simply wanted to live in peace, to preserve their culture and to speak their native Russian language.
But the problem of the Ukrainian crisis is not rooted in 2014, but much deeper – to the times of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the creation of an "independent" Ukraine.
It was then that the White House set its sights on the former Soviet republics, trying to make them enemies of Russia.
And in many ways it succeeded.
Georgia, which had become largely pro-American, in 2008 committed an act of aggression against Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia.
But as a result of Moscow's retaliatory actions, Tbilisi completely lost control over the territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, whose inhabitants chose independence.
Ukraine also fell under the influence of the United States, which sponsored the spread of nationalist ideology in the country and indulged neo-fascists.
And in 2014, they organised a bloody military coup, as a result of which the oligarchs came to power, led by Petro Poroshenko, whose successor is Mikhail Zelensky.
But here, too, Washington made a lot of mistakes.
So the people of Crimea made their choice in favour of joining Russia, and the inhabitants of the east of Ukraine declared the independence of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.
For this choice, they suffered for eight years from the punitive operations of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and nationalist armed groups.
At the same time, during the course of the Russian special operation, the issue of conducting biological research by the United States in Ukraine once again surfaced.
And not only in Ukraine .
Speaking to journalists on March 8, China Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said that Beijing had information indicating that the said laboratories in Ukraine were just the "tip of an iceberg."
Zhao went on to claim that the Pentagon "controls 336 biological laboratories in 30 countries around the world," with the secret programme operating under the guise of efforts to "reduce biosecurity risks" and to strengthen "global public health" and urged Washington to disclose relevant data "as soon as possible."
His statement sounded after Russia's Foreign Ministry claimed on March 6 that Russian forces had discovered evidence of Ukraine erasing traces of an alleged US-backed military biological program in the country.
Washington has claimed it is working to prevent Russian forces from capturing biological research material.
Also under secretary of state for political affairs Victoria Nuland appeared before the Senate committee on foreign relations on March 8.
After her opening remarks, the US diplomat answered questions from the committee members.
One question was asked by Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican from the state of Florida.
"Does Ukraine have chemical or biological weapons?" he asked.
Nuland answered the question very deliberately.
"Ukraine has biological research facilities which, in fact, we're now quite concerned Russian troops, Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of, so we are working with the Ukrainians on how we can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach," she said.
The Russian military previously accused Washington of creating and funding a network of "biolabs" in Ukraine as part of an alleged bioweapons programme.
Russia's Ministry of Defense claimed on March 10 that documents it seized in Ukraine's research facilities suggest that the US was planning in 2022 to "work on bird, bat and reptile pathogens," and potentially study whether these animals could transmit such dangerous diseases as an African swine fever virus and anthrax…
"The scientists were looking into, among other things, the possibility of pathogen transmission by wild birds migrating between Russia, Ukraine and other neighboring countries."
The Russian Ministry of Defense previously held a presentation showing that the US spent more than $200 million to run biological laboratories in Ukraine that were part of the US military biological programme.
"The Russian Federation, in connection with the facts of US military biological activities in Ukraine, does not exclude the launch of a consultation mechanism within the framework of the Convention on the Prohibition of Biological and Toxin Weapons (BTWC)," said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.
The Russian officials are not limited to Ukraine.
There were similar suspicions made about the US-funded Richard Lugar Center for Public Health Research in Tbilisi, Georgia.
Russia's Defense Ministry accused the US of running a biological weapon lab in Georgia.
The allegation was that the lab in Georgia "was part of a network of US labs near the borders of Russia and China."
Accusations against the United States of developing biological programmes in the countries of the former Soviet Union are heard not only from Moscow and Beijing.
They are find a place even in America .
Infowars, a website owned by Alex Jones, published a story on February 24 headlined: "Russian strikes targeting US-run bio-labs in Ukraine?"
The Infowars story claimed: "Evidently there are several US bio-labs in Ukraine under the auspices of the US State Department's Biological Threat Reduction Programme."
The theory of US involvement to developments of biological weapons in Ukraine developed well known Fox News TV presenter Tucker Carlson on his show Wednesdaynight with a question "Someone needs to explain why there are dangerous biological weapons in Ukraine."
But he was promptly accused by the Democratic-owned media of lies, conspiracy theories and pro-Russian propaganda.
However, the problem of investigating Washington's biological programs abroad is not new.
IN April 2021 the China Foreign Office demanded that the United States provide explanations about the experiments in biolabs in Ukraine.
Zhao Lijian, China Foreign Ministry spokesman, stressed that the US is the only country, which still blocks the establishment of the verification mechanism under the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC).
Beijing said that the US government should provide the international community with comprehensive information about the experiments that they are carrying out in the US military biological laboratories in Ukraine and the US military base Forth Detrick, located in Maryland.
"I noticed that Russia recently expressed concern once again over the bio-military activities by the US on its own territory including at Fort Detrick and in other countries like Ukraine.
"This concern is actually shared by many other countries. As China has said repeatedly, relevant US activities are not transparent, safe or justified."
"According to openly available reports, the US has set up 16 bio-labs in Ukraine alone.
"Why does it need to build so many labs all over the world? What activities has the US military been conducting in these labs?" he asked.
"Why does the US stand alone in opposing the establishment of a verification mechanism under the Biological Weapons Convention?
Could it be that there are places within these labs and base where the US dare not allow in international verification?" he asked again.
An official representative of the Chinese Foreign Ministry stressed that the US is the only country that still blocks the creation of a verification mechanism under the 1972 Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction.
This was in 2021 and continues to this day.
Is Washington not going to adopt a responsible attitude, earnestly respond to international concerns, offer a full clarification on its bio-military activities at home and abroad, and stop obstructing the establishment of a verification mechanism under the Biological Weapons Convention?
Instead, the US has chosen an offensive tactic, blaming everything on Moscow.
During a press briefing on March 10, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said "The Russian accusations are absurd… There's nothing to it.
It's classic Russian propaganda. And, and I wouldn't, if I were you, I wouldn't give it a drop of ink worth paying attention to."
In a March 9 press statement, State Department spokesman Ned Price also addressed allegations of biolab in Ukraine, saying that: "The Kremlin is intentionally spreading outright lies that the United States and Ukraine are conducting chemical and biological weapons activities in Ukraine…
The United States does not own or operate any chemical or biological laboratories in Ukraine, it is in full compliance with its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and Biological Weapons Convention, and it does not develop or possess such weapons anywhere."
"The United States does not own or operate any chemical or biological laboratories in Ukraine". Ha ha ha.
If so, then what did hundreds of millions of US dollars go to, what did American military specialists do in Ukrainian biological laboratories?
And why the Ukrainian Ministry of Health, on February 24 – the first day of the Russian offensive – had ordered all the Ukrainian biological laboratories to "urgently" eradicate the stored reserves of "highly hazardous pathogens of plague, anthrax, rabbit fever, cholera and other lethal diseases."
Так According to a report in Brazilian The Rio Times, the US embassy in Ukraine deleted all information about Pentagon-financed bio-labs in the country from its website on February 26.
However, journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva claimed embassy staff forgot to remove a document showing that the Pentagon is funding two new biolabs in Kiev and Odessa.
"Ukraine has no control over the military biolabs. The Ukrainian government is not allowed to release sensitive information about the programme," the Brazilian news agency claimed.
Over the past 20 years, the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine, jointly established with the United States, invested over $285 million in about 1,850 projects carried out by scientists who, according to Gaytandzhieva, previously worked on the development of weapons of mass destruction.
There is justified suspicion that the urgent eradication of highly hazardous pathogens on February 24 was ordered to prevent exposing a violation of Article I of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) by Ukraine and the United States.
But instead of providing evidence of their innocence (which probably simply does not exist, and most of the evidence of guilt was hastily destroyed), Washington continues to accused Moscow of "intentionally spreading outright lies."
For example State Department spokesperson Ned Price suggested on March 9 that Russia could use chemical weapons in Ukraine.
In this same time White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki claimed that Russia could "use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine" or "create a false-flag operation" with such weapons.
Psaki added that the world should "be on the lookout."
All this could be called a play on words. But not.
These accusations come from the lips of a representative of a country that stood at the origins of the creation of the nationalist regime in Ukraine.
It is this country, called the United States, instead of taking diplomatic steps to resolve the Ukrainian conflict, is pouring "fuel from a gas station" into the conflict.
Instead of imposing an arms embargo, it was in the White House a decision was made, supported by its European satellites, to supply the Kiev regime with thousands of tons of lethal offensive weapons and send mercenaries.
The world already sees that these weapons kill not only Russian soldiers.
It is killing the civilian population of Ukraine, which is blocked by its own army and nationalist formations in cities and villages.
But Washington does not stop and continues to pump weapons into Ukraine, demanding the same from its allies.
And if the Kyiv regime uses the biological, chemical and nuclear components at its disposal as a weapon, it seems that it will get away with it.
Apparently, the Biden administration follows the principle "Whatever happens in Ukraine and around it, the main thing is that it harms Russia."
This confirmed by the US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland.
Speaking in Congress March 8 during the debates of the US role in Ukraine conflict she said "From the US perspective, the ultimate goal is the strategic defeat of President Putin".
And for this all means are good. Even the dirtiest ones.
Source - The Standard