The labs ‘could be at risk of compromise due to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war,’ the outgoing director of national intelligence said.
The United States has helped build and financially support more than 40 biolaboratories in Ukraine, including a facility in Kharkiv that likely contains “dangerous pathogens,” according to documents declassified by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and made public on June 12.
The labs in Ukraine “could be at risk of compromise due to the ongoing Russia–Ukraine war,” Gabbard, who is exiting the Trump administration later in the month to help care for her husband after he was diagnosed with cancer, said in a video statement.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) told The Epoch Times in May that initial searches of intelligence files showed the U.S. government has funded over 120 biolabs in more than 30 countries, including Ukraine.
Officials said at the time that some labs had researched highly contagious pathogens but provided few other details.
One of the documents released on Friday says that the U.S.-supported Institute of Experimental and Clinical Veterinary Medicine in Kharkiv “probably houses at least some dangerous pathogens and almost certainly remains vulnerable to long-standing information operations, seizure, or damage.”
As of the early 2010s, the institute held hundreds of pathogens and was one of more than 40 labs in Ukraine that received assistance under a Department of Defense program aimed at reducing biological threats, the document stated, adding, “Although the facility has updated some areas with modern equipment and infrastructure, [it] as recently as 2019 had at least some biosafety and biosecurity deficiencies—most notable in rooms handling contagious Brucella bacteria—according to [redacted] [redacted] reporting.”
Another U.S. intelligence document released by Gabbard says that the facilities in Ukraine have worked on pathogens such as anthrax, Ebola, and the SARS coronavirus, and that the United States has trained Ukrainian scientists on biocontainment.
A third file states that the United States invested $9.1 million in four of the labs, including the Ukrainian Research Antiplague Institute in Odesa.
