There are “no offensive biologic weapons” in the Ukraine laboratories that the United States has been funding, a Pentagon official told Congress on April 1.
Deborah Rosenbaum, the assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs, told the House Subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations on Friday that there are “unequivocally … no offensive biologic weapons in the Ukraine laboratories that the United States has been involved with.”
The Pentagon funds labs in Ukraine through its Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), a support agency within the Department of Defense for countering weapons of mass destruction, and both U.S and Ukraine officials say the labs seek to prevent bioweapons and pathogens.
According to a Pentagon fact sheet released in March (pdf), since 2005, the United States has “invested approximately $200 million in Ukraine … supporting 46 Ukrainian laboratories, health facilities, and diagnostic sites.”
The Biological Threat Reduction Program has “improved Ukraine’s biological safety, security, and surveillance for both human and animal health,” the Pentagon fact sheet states.
However, Russia has in recent months accused the U.S.-funded laboratories in Ukraine of developing biological warfare weapons. Such allegations were being aired on Russian state-run media even prior to the Moscow-led invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24.
The Russian Ministry of Defense on March 6 issued a statement on Telegram accusing Ukraine of having destroyed disease-causing pathogens being studied at a lab in Ukraine that the ministry said is funded by the U.S. Department of Defense.
Russia’s allegations regarding the biological laboratories appeared to be repeated by the Chinese regime on March 7.
The World Health Organization confirmed in March that it advised the Ministry of Health in Ukraine to destroy “high-threat pathogens to prevent any potential spills.”
But analysts believe that the narrative being pushed by the Kremlin is part of its plan to create a false-flag operation in an attempt to justify using chemical weapons operations in Ukraine itself.
Rosenbaum told officials on Friday that, “the department remains very concerned about the ability to get accurate and transparent information out to the U.S. public, as well as certainly our allies and the rest of the world.”
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