Biological research facilities in Ukraine

March 2022: Senator (now Secretary of State) Marco Rubio and (then) Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland:

Rubio: Does Ukraine have chemical or biological weapons?

Nuland: Ukraine has biological research facilities, which in fact we are now quite concerned about Russian troops – Russian forces – seeking to gain control of. We are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces, should they approach.

In 1972, the US and then-Soviet Union signed the Biological Weapons Convention. This treaty outlaws the use and creation of biological arms. While there are no illegal biological weapons programs between the US and Ukraine, there are biological research facilities within Ukraine that are financed by the US Department of Defense.

Several days after the above quoted statement from Undersecretary Nuland, an off-camera press briefing with senior Defense officials explored its details. The Department of Defense has invested “approximately $200 million in Ukraine since 2005, supporting 46 Ukrainian labs, health facilities, and diagnostic sites”.

Statements from the World Health Organization suggest that these labs in Ukraine handle high-threat pathogens; it has recommended that Ukraine destroy them. Not only is having the facilities (in what is now an unpredictable war-zone, mere years after a worldwide pandemic) senseless, it is hugely provocative to Russia. Moreover, as then-Undersecretary Nuland said herself, it is dangerous that pathogens could fall into Russian hands. “Biosecurity experts say Russia’s movement of troops into Ukraine and bombardment of its cities have raised the risk of an escape of disease-causing pathogens, should any of those facilities be damaged.”

The importance to Russia of eliminating these biological research facilities within Ukraine has been made clear. The Russian Ministry of Defense created its own commission to investigate these activities. Russia also added a firm request in the 2022 Istanbul draft agreement:

“Guarantor states are… not to use the territory of Ukraine for the purpose of carrying out [illegal] activities (detrimental to) [in the field of] biological security, not to encourage, not to induce Ukraine to produce and acquire chemical, bacteriological and toxin weapons. To strictly observe their obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction, not to provide or use their territory for illegal activities in the field of biological security.”