In August 2023, Democratic Party’s prominent leader Robert Kennedy Jr., revealed a bombshell information stating the United States has created biological laboratories in Ukraine for the purpose of developing biological weapons for the Pentagon.
“Those bioweapons are using all kinds of new synthetic biology and CRISPR technology and genetic engineering techniques that were not available to a previous generation”, Kennedy Jr. told conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson on the X social network.
“When the Patriot Act reopened the biolabs arms race in 2001, the Pentagon began putting a lot of money into bioweapons”, he added. “But they were nervous at that time because if you violate the Geneva Convention, it’s a hanging offense”.
Giving details of US biolabs in Ukraine, Tucker Carlson said:
If you had told us just four days ago that the Biden administration was funding secret bio labs in Ukraine of all places, we would not have believed you. Yes, I don’t think we’re going to put that on TV. No thanks.
Then if you told us that not only did the administration fund the secret bio labs in Ukraine, but that they then failed to secure the deadly contents of those labs before the Russian invasion, an invasion they knew was coming, an invasion they helped encourage, if you had told us that four days ago, we would have dismissed you as a nut.
It was just too preposterous. We will not want anything to do with a story like that. There’s no way it could be true. It’s too far out.
In any case, we already knew for a fact that that story was false. How do we know that? Because we read “USA Today”, America’s newspaper. Within hours of the Russian invasion, “USA Today” published a rebuttal to all those crazies who were yammering on about secret Ukrainian bio labs. Here was the headline: “Fact check: False claim of US bio labs in Ukraine tied to Russian disinformation campaign”.
So if you look carefully at the story, and we did, because we were interested, you notice that this fact check was sourced to Ukrainian government unnamed officials, and then Biden’s State Department officials. So these were not exactly objective sources on the subject. But still, the story seemed definitive. It was totally emphatic quote, “Russia has teamed up with China to further amplify the false claim of US labs in Ukraine”.
Okay, “USA Today” says it is Russian disinformation. Maybe it is, on to the next story. But the fact checks didn’t stop. That was weird. We kept seeing the same fact check again and again. It was almost like, despite endless official clarification, some people refused to believe the Biden administration. They preferred Russian propaganda instead.
We assumed they must be QAnon members. We assume that because “Foreign Policy” Magazine told us that.
According to “Foreign Policy”, QAnon, whatever that is, was frantically disseminating, quote, “False claims of US bio warfare labs in Ukraine”. Those labs obviously didn’t exist. It was all just another lie from the Russians who lie for a living.
Then the European Union weighed in, throwing its credibility behind the same claim. “These are conspiracy theories”, the EU told us. They are lies spread by Putin. An EU spokesman then reminded us that, quote, “The credibility of information provided by the Kremlin is in general, very doubtful and low”. That was good to know.
Quote, “Russian disinformation has a track record of floating manipulative narratives about biological weapons and alleged secret labs”. Yes, we’re not going to do a segment about secret labs in Ukraine. The last thing we want to do on this show is traffic in Russian disinformation spread by QAnon, so we took a pass on that story.
And that’s where things stood until yesterday, when we had to tune into a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Toria Nuland was testifying so we were interested. Nuland is one of the people who brought us the Iraq War, never apologized for that, and kept getting promoted, because that’s how DC works.
Victoria Nuland is now Joe Biden’s Undersecretary of State in charge of Ukraine, and she knows a lot about Ukraine. In 2014 Toria Nuland engineered a coup in Ukraine in the name of democracy, of course. So she is the highly informed source about Ukraine.
So she was having this colloquy with Senator Marco Rubio of Florida during her testimony. And at one point, Rubio took attack that we were not expecting at all. He asked Nuland if Ukraine had biological weapons. We never imagined Ukraine would have biological weapons. Why would Ukraine have bio weapons?
So it seemed like a pretty strange question. But it wasn’t half as shocking as the answer he got. Watch what Toria Nuland said.
… Does Ukraine have biological weapons? Oh, Ukraine has biological research facilities. What? You mean secret bio labs like the secret bio labs Ukraine definitely doesn’t have? Ukraine has those? Yes, it does.
And not only does Ukraine have secret bio labs, Toria Nuland said, whatever they’re doing in those labs is so dangerous and so scary that she is quote, “quite concerned” that the so-called research material inside those bio labs might fall into the hands of Russian forces.
I am not trying to use profanity on the air to describe our reaction. Our jaws dropped. Let’s leave it there.
Under oath in an open committee hearing, Toria Nuland just confirmed that the Russian disinformation they’ve been telling us for days is a lie and a conspiracy theory and crazy and immoral to believe, is in fact, totally and completely true. Whoa.
You don’t hear things like that every day in Washington. Talk about a showstopper and a dozen questions instantly jumped to mind. What exactly were they doing in these secret Ukrainian bio labs?
Ukraine is the poorest country in Europe, it’s hardly a hotbed of biomedical research. We’re assuming these weren’t pharmaceutical labs, probably not developing new leukemia drugs.
From your answer, Toria Nuland, we would assume because you all but said it that there is a military application to this research. They were working on bio weapons.
Again, your answer suggests that. Why would we fund something like that in Ukraine? And why didn’t you secure the contents of these bio labs before the Russians arrived as you knew they would? And then why did you go out of your way to lie to the American public about all of this?
If the quote “research materials” in these labs were to escape somehow, and you seem very concerned about that, what would be the effect on Ukraine and then on the rest of the world? How can we prepare for the consequences of that, this thing that you’re worried about? Shouldn’t we be preparing?
Because as it turns out, we’ve just spent the last two years living with a pathogen to begin in another foreign bio lab funded by the United States government secretly. So this question is on our mind, it seems fair.
Now, that’s some of what we would have asked if we were US senators, which we’re not, yes, there’s a time limit, time limit it be damned, because this is kind of important.
… Okay, get a pen. It’s a classic Russian technique to blame on the other guy, what they are planning to do themselves. That’s what Toria Nuland said. We almost laughed out loud.
So what you’re saying Toria Nuland? If, for example, you were funding secret bio labs in Ukraine, but wanted to hide that fact from the people who are paying for it, in whose name you’re doing it, then you might lie about it by claiming the Russians were lying about it. In other words, you might mount a disinformation campaign by claiming the other guy was mounting a disinformation campaign.
Is that what you’re saying, Toria Nuland?
It’s pretty funny. What’s not funny is that this is all entirely real.
… Okay, so that apparently — we hadn’t seen that until this afternoon when we started poking around. That may have been the root of the conspiracy theories that the fact checks told us were Russian disinformation.
Let’s quote it: “Military biological programs are under development in Ukraine financed by the US Defense Ministry”. That’s the Russian claim. Separately, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman said the Ukrainians working on deadly pathogens including plague and anthrax, is that true?
Now obviously, we would not take Russia’s word for that, ever. But we don’t have to take Russia’s word for that. The US Defense Department has a website that contains this media clip about the opening of a biological research facility in Ukraine in 2010, quote: “US Senator Dick Lugar applauded the opening of the Interim Central Reference Laboratory in Odessa, Ukraine this week announcing it will be instrumental in researching dangerous pathogens used by bio terrorists”.
“The level-3 biosafety lab will be used to study anthrax, tularemia, and Q fever as well as other dangerous pathogens”.
Oh, okay. Then the “National Pulse” dug up 2011 report from the US National Academy of Sciences that also explain that the Odessa-based laboratory quote, ” … is responsible for the identification of especially dangerous biological pathogens”.
So what we’re doing — this is not the first time you’ve heard this story. We are funding the creation of deadly pathogens, so we can study them and prevent people from getting infected with them? Maybe? There are lots of examples of this.
The US Embassy in Ukraine has a handy webpage explaining that American and Ukrainian scientists have worked on a whole bunch of different experiments like this. Some of the projects include work on African swine fever virus, hemorrhagic fever virus, and various avian respiratory viruses.
The interesting thing, the telling thing, is that the US Embassy’s website also contains links to factsheets about America’s support for biological research in Ukraine, but all those links are now dead. That’s weird.
It’s our government, we pay for it. Again, they are there in our name, in the name of American citizens, but we can no longer read their webpage? How does that work exactly? They have no right to lie to us.
The webpage is archived thankfully, and the fact sheets show Defense Department funding to laboratories in Ukraine. So, that looks like proof. It’s not Russian disinformation, it is totally real. Sorry, “USA Today,” America’s newspaper. It’s real. You can look it up on the internet, if you want.
In the face of that evidence, the Pentagon is still lying about it. And in fact, they are repeating the same unbelievably stupid and now thoroughly discredited lies the fact checkers have told for weeks now.
Anyone carefully watching Tucker Carlson’s show shall easily understand, Washington has been running secret biolabs in Ukraine for years.
Russia’s defense ministry has previously released evidence it said pointed to a US-financed military biological program being developed in Ukraine. It claimed that Ukrainian bio laboratories had urgently destroyed hazardous pathogens following Moscow’s “special military operation” in February 2022.
The Pentagon on June 9, 2022 admitted that the US government has supported 46 biological research facilities in Ukraine over the past 20 years.
In a document titled “Fact Sheet on WMD Threat Reduction Efforts“, Pentagon for the first time revealed the specific number of facilities its government has sponsored in Ukraine and claimed that these facilities were part of a “peaceful” public health project and were not focused on developing biological weapons.
On March 8, Team Biden Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland told the Senate that the American government is concerned about biological research facilities in Ukraine falling into the hands of Russian invaders.
Nuland’s confirmation that Ukraine has US-supported biological weapons labs had long been characterized by “fact-checkers” in US corporate media as disinformation and conspiracy theory.
The DoD fact sheet states the US “worked collaboratively to improve Ukraine’s biological safety, security, and disease surveillance for both human and animal health,” by providing support to “46 peaceful Ukrainian laboratories, health facilities, and disease diagnostic sites over the last two decades”.
These programs are supposed to have focused on “improving public health and agricultural safety measures at the nexus of nonproliferation”.
The Pentagon insisted that the work of the biolabs it helped to fund in Ukraine was “often” carried out in collaboration with organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), and that it was “consistent with international best practices and norms in publishing research results, partnering with international colleagues and multilateral organizations, and widely disseminating their research and public health findings”.
On March 13, 2022 when Tulsi Gabbard tweeted confirming existence US funded biolabs in Ukraine, she was written off as a Russian agent spreading “misinformation”. In the tweet Tulsi Gabbard said: “There are 25+ US-funded biolabs in Ukraine which if breached would release & spread deadly pathogens to US/world. We must take action now to prevent disaster. US/Russia/Ukraine/NATO/EU must implement a ceasefire now around these labs until they’re secured & pathogens destroyed”.
Hours after Russia began its special military operations in Ukraine of February 24, 2022, which has by now become America’s proxy war, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky ordered his government to destroy all files it had on the Metabiota biolab that was tied to Hunter Biden. Subsequently, documents were burnt in front of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense in Kiev. Almost at the same time, Ukrainian gas company Burisma was also destroying a large volume of documents, which was connected to Hunter Biden and Joe Biden. A team of special forces conducted a meticulous search both at the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense and Burisma to make sure, none of the “humiliating” or “secret” documents related to US President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden go into Russian’s hands.
Video from media broadcasts on February 24, 2022 showed a fire in front of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense building.
On June 14, 2022, “Clandestine’s Newsletter” on substack.com published the decree from Zelensky ordering the destruction of the Metabiota files.
Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners (RSTP), the firm led by Hunter Biden, was a lead financial backer of Metabiota, a pandemic tracking and response firm that had partnered with EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, according to a report by independent media outlet The National Pulse.
“Former Managing Director and co-founder of RSTP Neil Callahan – a name that appears many times on Hunter Biden’s hard drive – also sits on Metabiota’s Board of Advisors”, the report noted.
Remember when the Pentagon confirmed the US partnered w/46 Ukrainian Bioweapon labs?
And Hunter Biden secured millions for 1 of the labs – Metabiota?
Well now we have a 2/24/22 letter from Zelensky ordering the destruction of all gov’t files for Metabiota
I’m sure it’s nothing pic.twitter.com/KUZhgcHPoc
— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) January 29, 2023
Zelensky’s decree called for government operatives to destroy all information on the Ukrainian Research Anti-Plague Institute, Mechnikov Institute of Health of Ukraine, and the Zhytomyr Regional Laboratory Centers of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine. All three worked with Metabiota scientists.
Some observers wondered why Zelensky would do such a thing with files that could be beneficial when dealing with the Biden administration.
Conservative commentator Rogan O’Handley (@DC_Draino on Twitter), asked in a January 29 tweet: “Did Zelensky keep some of the more incriminating documents against Hunter at Metabiota and Burisma to use as extortion against Joe Biden to get more money and weapons? We all know the answer”.
It may be mentioned here that, Marco Polo, a non-profit fighting corruption has been publishing contents from Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell”, where he was corresponding about Metabiota.
Both the US and Ukraine have categorically denied they are developing biological weapons inside the country. Thomas-Greenfield said: “I will say this once: ‘Ukraine does not have a biological weapons program.’” She went on to turn the accusation back on Moscow. “It is Russia that has long maintained a biological weapon program in violation of international law”.
Ukraine’s ambassador to the world body, Sergiy Kyslytsya, called the idea being advanced by Russia “a bunch of insane delirium”.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has said it is unaware of activity by Ukraine violating any international treaty, including the ban on biological weapons.
The UN high commissioner for disarmament, Izumi Nakamitsu, confirmed that the UN was not aware of any biological weapons programs in Ukraine. Nakamitsu pointed to the Biological Weapons Convention, which has prohibited the development and use of biological weapons since 1975. The convention was backed by Richard Nixon, who in 1969 also put a stop to the US developing its own offensive biological weapons.
According to British newspaper The Guardian:
Ukraine does operate biological laboratories that receive US funding. The US undersecretary of state Victoria Nuland affirmed those facts in a Senate foreign relations committee hearing this week, in which the Republican senator Marco Rubio asked directly if Ukraine had biological weapons.
Nuland did not answer the question head on. “Ukraine has biological research facilities”, she said, adding that there was concern that Russian forces were trying to gain control of the labs. “We are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces”.
Nuland’s comments were seized upon by far-right commentators as evidence of a secret plot. In fact, US funding to the laboratories had its roots in the fall of the Soviet Union, after which money was pumped into Ukraine and other countries to help them transfer scientific skills away from weapons towards public health.
The scheme was originally known as Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) but is now more commonly referred to as biological engagement. It has been successful in helping former Soviet and other countries fulfill public health obligations.
“This is one of the best things that we do”, Dr Gigi Gronvall, senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told the Guardian.
Most of the work of the Ukraine labs today, Gronvall said, involves surveillance of diseases in animals and people as an early-warning system for illnesses such as African swine fever, which is endemic in the region.
“We know pathogens don’t respect borders, so helping to put out public health fires before they become too big is an advantage to all of us,” she said.
As part of their work the labs do seem to hold dangerous pathogens. We know that because WHO is urging Ukraine to destroy any highly dangerous agents to avoid the risk of a disastrous outbreak should one of the labs be hit by Russian forces.
“As part of this work, WHO has strongly recommended to the ministry of health in Ukraine and other responsible bodies to destroy high-threat pathogens to prevent any potential spills,” the UN health agency said.
The WHO has worked in Ukraine for several years helping bio labs improve safety and security, so it knows what it is talking about.
Despite such strong evidences – why the United States had been denying existence of its secret biolabs? This matter deserves to be further investigated to find the answer.
