Document on Wikileaks 'a proof' US manufactured 'components of bioweapons' in Kyiv: Russia

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova on Sunday said that there is evidence such as the leaked documents, and other records on US-based non-profit organization Wikileaks that link United States’ political elites with the activities at the military biological labs in Ukraine. Moscow’s Defense Ministry has accused Washington of funding labs in Kyiv that were developing biological weapon components and conducting research on biowarfare diseases and bat coronaviruses. Russia has cited several documents as proof of covert “bioweapons labs” established by the United States under the Pentagon’s control that conducted research on the deadly pathogens. 

Maria Zakharova said the Russian armed forces have evidence of the development of biological weapon components by Ukraine under the United States military headquarters, Pentagon, which violates the Biological Weapons Convention. She asked the US what happened to the biological materials taken out from the labs, whether they were destroyed by Washington or not. A US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland has also caused an uproar after she confirmed that there are US-led biological research facilities in Ukraine.

“Ukraine has biological research facilities,” she said answering Senator Marco Rubio's direct question at Senate foreign relations committee hearing.

“We are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces,” she added.

Ukraine’s ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya labelled Russia's bioweapons claims “a bunch of insane delirium”. US President Joe Biden, in turn, accused Russia's President Vladimir Putin of using biological weapons in war. “His back is against the wall,” said Biden, responding to Russia's bio lab claims.  World Health Organization (WHO) said in a statement that it is "unaware" of such an activity in Ukraine. UN high commissioner for disarmament, Izumi Nakamitsu said that the UN "is not aware of any biological weapons in Ukraine." 

“Now he’s talking about new false flags he’s setting up, including he’s asserting that, we, in America, have biological as well as chemical weapons in Europe. Simply not true, I guarantee you," Biden said in response to Russia's claims. 

(Russian ambassador to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, accused Ukraine of operating chemical and biological labs with US support. Image: AP)

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin had mentioned the threat of “weapons of mass destruction” near Russia’s borders as a justification for his invasion of Ukraine on February 24. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, and its UN ambassador, Vasily Nebenzya, have both made wide-ranging claims of the US involvement in biowarfare labs in Ukraine citing the “underlying evidence”.

Russian biologist Eugene Lewitin separately conducted an analysis of the documents concerning the Biolabs in Ukraine. In a letter posted by a Russian biologist on Facebook and change.org with 800 signatories, he later clarified that documents do “not imply any development of biological weapons or even the use of particularly dangerous pathogens in the laboratories. The list of destroyed strains published by RIA Novosti and other Russian media outlets contains not a single, particularly dangerous strain. The list contains only strains common to microbiological and even more so to epidemiological laboratories.”

'We've seen PRC officials echo these conspiracy theories': US State dept

US State Department had earlier denied such claims in a statement, saying that the Kremlin is intentionally spreading outright lies that the United States and Ukraine are conducting chemical and biological weapons activities in Ukraine. “We have also seen PRC officials echo these conspiracy theories. This Russian disinformation is total nonsense and not the first time Russia has invented such false claims against another country.  Also, these claims have been debunked conclusively and repeatedly over many years,” US State Department asserted in a hardened stance.

Washington accused Russia of inventing “false pretexts” in an attempt to justify its fierce invasion of the sovereign Ukrainian territory. “The United States does not own or operate any chemical or biological laboratories in Ukraine, it is in full compliance with its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and Biological Weapons Convention,” State Department iterated, accusing Moscow of running such active chemical and biological weapons programmes. 

“These tactics are an obvious ploy by Russia to try to justify further premeditated, unprovoked, and unjustified attacks on Ukraine,” the US State Department said in a statement, doubling down on Moscow’s allegations. 

Russia’s defence ministry in a state presser said that Washington created bioagents in labs it established in Kyiv where it also conducted an R-781 project that involved bats as carriers of potential biological weapons. Other research included bacterial and viral pathogens that can be transmitted from bats to humans: pathogens of plague, leptospirosis, brucellosis, as well as coronaviruses and filoviruses. 

“It is noteworthy that the research is carried out in close proximity to the borders of Russia – in the areas of the Black Sea coast and the Caucasus,” said the Russian defense ministry.

Georgian biological laboratories were also involved which were controlled by the Pentagon, in cooperation with the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and the US Geological Survey.

Project code ‘UP-8’

Showing the declassified documents to the press, Russia revealed a project code ‘UP-8’, which it claimed was aimed at studying the Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever virus and hantaviruses in Ukraine. These documents “clearly refute the US public statement that only Ukrainian scientists work in the Pentagon Biolabs in Ukraine without the intervention of American biologists,” said the Russian defence ministry. The project was implemented with the participation of laboratories in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odesa and was designed for the period up to the year 2020. 

Head of the Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Protection Troops of the Russian Armed Forces, Igor Kirillov said that Washington had sent 350 cryo containers with blood serum samples from the Public Health Centre of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine to a reference laboratory for infectious diseases at Australia's Doherty Institute. This, he claimed, was transferred under the pretext of determining the antibody titers. Moscow’s defence ministry also retrieved the payroll of Ukrainian contractors, which it says, clearly demonstrates how they were financed. 

Russia compares US' bio-weaponry research with Unit 731

Igor Kirillov compared US-backed bio-weaponry research with that in the 1940s conducted by the Imperial Japanese Unit 731 or Manshu Detachment 731 during WWII. The unit operated secretly through the second China-Japan war until the world war ended, and involved the nerve-wracking live human experiments on prisoners of wars captured at Harbin, Northeastern China. Covert biological and chemical warfare division operated out of the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army to bolster Japan’s biological warfare programme and was headquartered near the Pingfang district in Harbin.

Russia’s defence ministry said that the US Defence Threat Reduction Agency had a leading role in financing military biological research in Ukraine. As a part of the experiment, Washington sent 1,000 blood serum samples of citizens from different regions of Ukraine that exclusively belonged to the Slavic ethnic group to the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine (Hamburg).

United States managed to evacuate the facilities and discarded most of the documentation, including databases, biomaterials, and equipment from laboratories in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odesa to the Lviv Research Institute of Epidemiology and Hygiene and the US Consulate in Lviv.