By Dave DeCamp
US officials have said the labs could contain pathogens leftover from the Soviet Union’s bioweapons program
A Pentagon official told Congress on Friday that there are no “offensive” biological weapons in any of the dozens of US-linked labs in Ukraine.
“I can say to you unequivocally there are no offensive biologic weapons in the Ukraine laboratories that the United States has been involved with,” Deborah Rosenbaum, the assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs, told the House Armed Services subcommittee.
The Pentagon funds labs in Ukraine through its Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). According to a Pentagon fact sheet released last month, since 2005, the US has “invested” $200 million in “supporting 46 Ukrainian laboratories, health facilities, and diagnostic sites.”
Moscow has accused Ukraine of conducting an emergency clean-up of a secret Pentagon-funded biological weapons program when Russia invaded. The World Health Organization said it advised Ukraine to destroy “high-threat pathogens” around the time of the invasion.
