Daily Times

Controversy over the United States’ bioweapons laboratories in Ukraine, and its military support for Ukraine for the expansion of NATO is heating up. Ukraine has been ruined in a bid to control the resources in the region. The capitalist dream of unipolarity is concurrently leading to the expansion of biowarfare. Despite all of the “clearance certificates” from numerous US and Western experts and media tycoons. Russia reiterated in March last year (2022) that the American biolabs in several parts of Ukraine are engaged in preparing bioweapons. It was December 31, 2015, when President Vladimir Putin signed the country’s national security strategy for 2016, which included “colour revolutions and biological weapons as primary threats to Russia.”

The second point of the document stated that the US was complicating things with the bioweapons threat. “The network of US biological military labs is expanding on the territories of countries neighbouring Russia,” she said, adding, “Russia’s independent foreign and domestic policy has been met with counteraction by the US and its allies, seeking to maintain its dominance in world affairs.”

While signing the National Security Strategy 2016, the Russian president was well cognizant of the NATO expansion that was going overboard. The North Atlantic alliance’s advance towards Russia’s borders is a threat to national security, according to the document. Processes of militarization and arms build-ups are unfolding in regions neighbouring Russia, and the principles of equal and indivisible security are not being respected in the Euro-Atlantic, Eurasian and Asia-Pacific regions.

The independent experts believe that Washington has so far failed to provide substantiated answers to the questions posed by the Russian Federation, the Peoples’ Republic of China, and other international forums.

The US has also been leveling similar allegations against Russia that it will use bioweapons in Ukraine. So far, nothing has been claimed. Neither media supported Russia’s stance on the deep fake US stories against Russia. However, it appears strange that the world’s leading media outlets have come to defend Russia’s allegations against the US of having bioweapon labs in Ukraine.

BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) was the first to counter Russia’s claim about the US bio lab in Ukraine. On March 15, 2022, BBC refuted that “Russia has claimed without any evidence that biological weapons are being developed in laboratories in Ukraine with support from the United States.”

DW, the leading German media group, referring to “experts familiar with laboratories in Ukraine,” reported on May 3, 2022, that “no evidence of biological weapons [found] in Ukraine as Russia has claimed Kyiv is developing biological weapons with support from the US and Germany.”

Then several other media outlets followed suit. But, no independent monitoring report of the Ukrainian biolabs came up, undermining the preparations for bioweapons. Russia has accused the US and Ukraine of working with “pathogens of dangerous infections” in 30 laboratories across the country. Pathogens are microorganisms that can cause disease.

Fears are there that the stated goals of the Biological Threat Reduction Programme (BTRP) in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world do not correspond to actual research, but are instead aimed at developing biological weapons. Over the past nine months, Russia has consistently, based on documented evidence, revealed to the world the hidden goals of the US military-biological programme in Ukraine. Under the guise of peaceful projects, Russia claims that the United States and Ukraine have been developing elements of biological weapons and conducting research into the prevalence of pathogens near the Russian Federation’s borders.

This contradicts the officially stated goals of the Cooperative Biological Threat Reduction Programme. It is inconsistent with the reports submitted by Washington and Kyiv to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) of the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs. It seems that both countries are deliberately sabotaging the requirements of the Convention.

The independent experts believe that Washington has so far failed to provide substantiated answers to the questions posed by the Russian Federation, the Peoples’ Republic of China, and other international forums. The questions include, why the alleged peaceful research is coordinated and funded through the Pentagon, and the closed projects were implemented through the US Department of Defense (DOD) contractors with predominantly US military epidemiologists.

What explains the lack of access of Ukrainian special services and epidemiologists to the results and the process of implementation of closed military-biological projects in the United States?

On what grounds do Kyiv and Washington keep silent about the content and results of the joint military-biological activities in the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) reports?

How to interpret the Pentagon’s deployment of laboratories exclusively along the perimeter of Russian and Chinese borders?

Why have infectious disease outbreaks occurred in areas of Ukraine where Pentagon Biolabs has concentrated over the last decade?

If the US claims that it does not violate the Convention, how do we explain the patents registered by the Ministry of Defense on delivery systems for biological agents, including infectious insects?

To what purpose and according to what extent do US epidemiologists carry out research on dangerous pathogens that are unusual for the geographical location of Ukraine?

These questions remained unreciprocated even at the latest UNODA meeting on 28 November 2022. In a speech to the Biological Weapons Convention, the UNODA chief Izumi Nakamitsu explained that the issue of verifying whether biological toxins are being made has been deadlocked for 20 years. While bringing biosafety and biosecurity to a much higher prominence, the pandemic also demonstrated the disruption that could be caused if biological agents were to be used deliberately as weapons of war or terror. The international community should push ahead with stalled plans to prevent biological weapons from being developed in the wake of COVID-19.”

The writer is a freelance journalist and broadcaster, and Director Devcom-Pakistan. He can be reached at devcom.pakistan@gmail.com and tweets @EmmayeSyed