White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki did not directly address questions about the U.S.-funded “Biological Threat Reduction” biolaboratories in Ukraine. On Thursday, however, she took to Twitter to blast the media for reporting on Russia-and China-backed “conspiracy theories.”
“We took note of Russia’s false claims about alleged U.S. biological weapons labs and chemical weapons development in Ukraine,” Jen Psaki said on Twitter. “We’ve also seen Chinese officials echo these conspiracy theories.”
“This is preposterous,” she continued. “It’s the kind of disinformation operation we’ve seen repeatedly from the Russians over the years in Ukraine and in other countries, which have been debunked, and an example of the types of false pretexts we have been warning the Russians would invent.”
“The United States is in full compliance with its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological Weapons Convention and does not develop or possess such weapons anywhere,” she claimed. “It’s Russia that has a long and well-documented track record of using chemical weapons, including in attempted assassinations and poisoning of Putin’s political enemies like Alexey Navalny.”
“It’s Russia that continues to support the Assad regime in Syria, which has repeatedly used chemical weapons,” she went on. “It’s Russia that has long maintained a biological weapons program in violation of international law. Also, Russia has a track record of accusing the West of the very violations that Russia itself is perpetrating.”
“In December, Russia falsely accused the U.S. of deploying contractors with chemical weapons in Ukraine,” she continued. “This is all an obvious ploy by Russia to try to try to justify its further premeditated, unprovoked, and unjustified attack on Ukraine.”
“Now that Russia has made these false claims, and China has seemingly endorsed this propaganda, we should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them,” she added. “It’s a clear pattern.”
It’s ironic that the Communist Chinese are propagating the bioweapons ‘conspiracy theory’ despite concern about the Pentagon funding a similar program at Wuhan, where the Covid-19 pandemic originated.
On Wednesday, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby also addressed the matter.
Pentagon spox John Kirby calls Russia's accusations that Ukraine and the United States were developing bio-weapons "absurd" and "laughable," adding that it's "classic Russian propaganda." pic.twitter.com/bNSvzdp4AS
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) March 9, 2022
On Tuesday, Russia’s suspicions about the U.S.-funded biolaboratory program in Ukraine were heightened by the statements of Victoria Nuland, the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Watch:
“Ukraine has biological research facilities, which in fact, we are now quite concerned,” Nuland said “Russian troops, Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of, so we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces.”
Ukraine had already issued a presidential order on February 24 to sterilize the facilities in the event of unforeseen military occupation, as documents obtained and exclusively translated by Becker News revealed.
Documents scrubbed from the U.S. embassy in Ukraine and obtained by Becker News confirm the existence and Pentagon funding of the “Biological Threat Reduction” program.
On Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the United States of assisting the Ukrainians with the development of ‘biological warfare facilities’ in Kyiv and Odessa. Lavrov leveled the charge at a press conference on Thursday, which was echoed by top-ranking Russian diplomatic negotiators at Russia-Ukraine peace talks in Belarus on Monday. Watch:
“We have data that the Pentagon is preoccupied with the chemical and biological installations in Ukraine,” Lavrov claimed. “The Pentagon built two biowarfare labs and they have been developing pathogens there in Kyiv and in Odessa.”
“And now they are concerned that they may lose control over these labs,” he argued. “And you know what it may be like in future. And the Americans decline flatly and resolutely to start an inspection mechanism as part of the convention for the prohibition of chemical weapons. And they build new chemical and biological facilities all across Russian borders.”
“And, you know, many other developments happen,” Lavrov went on. “The CIA has been on the ground in droves, and they have been training the Ukrainian army, not to wage a war with Poland, apparently. And when developments in Iraq happened, when the United States claimed it was a threat to the U.S. national security, did anyone ask back then why the United States back then decided to bring a country 10,000 kilometers off its coast to order, because the U.S. is a great power?”
“When Russia says there is a threat to us, they start telling us that there is not a threat at all, but you know, we will decide what is needed to provide for our security,” Lavrov stated. “And it’s close and next to our borders, we will not go 10,000 kilometers away to enforce our rules.”
Russia is therefore invoking the United States’ invasion of Iraq in 2003 as a pretext for invading Ukraine. It turned out after the invasion that weapons inspectors could find scant if any evidence that then Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was maintaining an active Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) program. However, the New York Times reported that Iraq had old stockpiles of WMDs that were discovered by U.S. soldiers.
In May 2020, Lavrov accused the United States “categorically opposing the adoption of a protocol to the convention of banning biological and toxin weapons, which would establish a mechanism to verify compliance by member countries with their obligation not to produce such weapons.”
As earlier reported, a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, Major General Igor Konashenkov , said that the ministry would provide an “analysis of documents” on a program to create biological weapons components in Ukraine.
Slutsky also noted that, on February 24, according to the Ukrainian-language documents produced by Russia, laboratory staff in Ukraine received an order to immediately destroy especially dangerous pathogens, including the causative agents of ‘plague, anthrax, tularemia, cholera’ and other deadly diseases.
“We are getting more and more confirmation that Russia had more than good reasons for conducting a special military operation to demilitarize Ukraine,” Slutsky claimed on his Telegram channel.
There is virtually no evidence that a U.S.-funded biolaboratory program in Ukraine was working on bioweapons. However, the overblown reaction by the media is not helping to put Americans’ concerns to rest.
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OPINION: This article contains commentary which reflects the author's opinion.