Update at the end.
The Russian Federation says the available evidence points to Kiev operating biological laboratories which may have violated the Biological and Toxins Weapons Convention. The US denies it. The Federation called for a meeting of the UN Security Council to review the ‘evidence’ they say was given to them by a whistleblower.
They also pointed to comments made by US Under Secretary Nuland to Senator Rubio last week. She was concerned that Ukraine’s BioLabs would be taken over by the Russians and misused.
Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland appeared before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on March 8, testifying on the US and international response to Russia’s attack on Ukraine. After delivering her opening remarks, she took questions from the committee members.
One question, asked by Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican from the state of Florida, stood out. “Does Ukraine have chemical or biological weapons?” he asked.
Nuland answered the question. “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.
LIVE FEED OF THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL
Live Feed of UN considering Russian Federation reportedly presenting evidence of US military biological activities in Ukraine.
RUSSIAN FEDERATION PR
The Russians claim that the “traitors of Kyiv” have “a network of 30 biological laboratories supported by the US Ministry of Defense [Department of Defense].” In the laboratories “very dangerous biological experiments were conducted to strengthen the pathogenic qualities of the plague, anthrax, tularemia, cholera, and other lethal diseases using synthetic biology.” [gain-of-function?]
“This network is being done and funded and supervised by the defense threat reduction agency of the United States, including in the interest of the national center for medical intelligence of the United States Ministry of Defense.”
This was “put in place by the central reference laboratory with the biosafety level 3 using as a basis, the Ukrainian scientific anti-plague institute named after Mexico and located in Odesa.”
Russia states that these experiments were conducted in other research centers in Ukraine. They claim “the results of this work were sent to biological centers in the United States including into the US Army medical research center of infectious diseases, into the Walter Reed Army Institute of research, into the naval medical research of the US Navy, and into the US Army biological warfare laboratories in Fort Detrick, which used to be…uh…being key facilities of the American program to develop biological weapons. All of these materials are available on the website of our ministry of defense and our ministry of defense is describing them in the course of their daily briefings.”
US AMBASSADOR THOMAS-GREENFIELD
The United States Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the Russian PR called this meeting for the sole purpose of “lying and spreading disinformation”. The UN said earlier that the “UN is not aware of any biological or chemical weapons programs in Ukraine.”
“Ukraine owns and operates its own scientific infrastructure,” the UN Ambassador said. “The US has assisted Ukraine to do this work.” She noted that Secretary Blinken warned that Russia would fabricate a pretext for invading Ukraine, including falsely claiming there are biological weapons under development.
“Today Russia is doing exactly what we warned they would,” Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said. Russia is “trying to use the Security Council to legitimize disinformation and deceive people to justify President Putin’s war of choice against the Ukrainian people. and China too has been spreading disinformation in support of Russia’s outrageous claims.”
“I will say this once,” the US Ambassador stated, “Ukraine does not have a biological weapons program. There are no Ukrainian biological weapons laboratories supported by the United States, not near Russia’s border or anywhere. So, here are the facts. Ukraine owns and operates its own public health laboratory infrastructure. These facilities make it possible to detect and diagnose diseases like COVID-19 which benefits us all.”
“The United States has assisted Ukraine to do this safely and securely. This is work that has been done proudly, clearly, and out in the open. This work has everything to do with protecting the health of people. It has absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing to do with biological weapons,” she said.
The anger over the invasion of Ukraine was palatable during the presentations and Russia doesn’t appear to have much support so far.
Watch:
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