The U.S. intelligence community says Ukraine does not have a program to develop weapons of mass destruction and pushed back against Russian claims that the United States is running bioweapons labs in Ukraine, calling them part of a Kremlin disinformation campaign.
The Russian government and media outlets have ramped up claims in recent days that the U.S. operates bioweapons research facilities in Ukraine, with Chinese diplomats and propaganda outlets amplifying the story. The U.S. and Ukraine have consistently denied the claims, and Russia has never provided any proof, despite pushing the claims against Ukraine and other former Soviet states for many years.
Republican Sen. Marco Rubio said Thursday during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing: “Russia has been laying out this argument for a number of months now about how there are these labs in Ukraine that are developing chemical and biological weapons that the U.S. is involved with and that they discovered it.”
He argued, “The best way to combat disinformation is through transparency.”
Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said there is a difference between biological research facilities and biological weapons research facilities. She stressed the U.S. intelligence community does not believe Ukraine has any WMD program, saying the claims stemmed from Kremlin falsehoods.
“We do not assess that Ukraine is pursuing either biological weapons or nuclear weapons, which have been some of the, basically, propaganda that Russia is putting out,” Haines said. “We’ve seen no evidence of that, and frankly, this influence campaign is completely consistent with long-standing Russian efforts to accuse the United States of sponsoring bioweapons work in the former Soviet Union.”
Rubio asked what the U.S. role is in Ukraine’s biological research programs.
“Ukraine operates about a little over a dozen, essentially, biolabs, and what they’re involved in is Ukraine’s biodefense and their public health response, and that’s essentially what they’re intended to do,” Haines said. “I think the U.S. government provides assistance, or at least has in the past provided assistance, really in the context of biosafety, which is something that we’ve done globally with a variety of different countries.”
The Florida Republican asked how the U.S. defines biosafety.
“For biodefense, you think about things like medical countermeasures, for example, things that will help you to address a pandemic that is an outbreak in your country … Things that prevent spreading of pandemics and other health issues,” Haines said. “And the kinds of biosafety pieces that you would be providing assistance for would be making sure that as you’re producing medical countermeasures, that you’re taking appropriate precautions, that you’re letting the medical community internationally know, notifying when appropriate.”
U.S. DENIES RUSSIAN AND CHINESE CLAIMS OF BIOLABS IN UKRAINE
Rubio said the issue “piqued a lot of people’s interest” in part because of comments made by Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Tuesday when asked if Ukraine has chemical or biological weapons.
“Ukraine has biological research facilities, which, in fact, we are now quite concerned Russian troops and Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of,” Nuland said. “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 should they approach.”
A spokesperson for the State Department told the Washington Examiner Nuland “was referring to Ukrainian diagnostic and biodefense laboratories,” which “are not biological weapons facilities.”
Rubio said Nuland’s comments might make some people think there is something dangerous in the labs, especially in the context of COVID-19 potentially originating from a Chinese government lab. The U.S. has condemned China’s false claims that SARS-CoV-2 originated with the U.S. military.
The senator asked why the U.S. would be concerned about materials in the Ukrainian labs falling into Russian hands.
Haines said medical facilities often “have equipment or, you know, sort of pathogens or other things that you have to have restrictions around because you want to make sure that they’re being treated and handled appropriately” and said that is probably what Nuland meant.
The intelligence chief added, “We have to be concerned in the same way that we have to be concerned about … the nuclear power plant, or other facilities, that when they’re seized and if they’re seized, that there may be damage done or theft, and they may, in fact, misuses some of the material that’s there that’s not intended for weapons purposes but nevertheless can be used in dangerous ways.”
Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, chairman of the committee, told Rubio that “we’ve seen some of these reports that this may be another area where Russia is trying to offer a false flag signal and really appreciate your line of questioning.”
The U.S. and Ukraine signed an agreement in 2005 for the Defense Department to assist Ukraine in the “prevention of proliferation of technology, pathogens, and expertise that could be used in the development of biological weapons.”
The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine says the Pentagon’s Biological Threat Reduction Program’s “priorities in Ukraine are to consolidate and secure pathogens and toxins of security concern and to continue to ensure Ukraine can detect and report outbreaks caused by dangerous pathogens before they pose security or stability threats.”
The Russian Defense Ministry claimed Sunday that “evidence of the Kyiv regime’s hasty measures to conceal any traces of the military biological program financed by the U.S. Department of Defense in Ukraine has been revealed.” The Kremlin and Russia’s Foreign Ministry have pushed similar allegations, and Russia seized on Nuland’s remarks.
This spurred Biden officials to weigh in on Wednesday.
“The Russian accusations are absurd, they are laughable, and, you know, in the words of my Irish Catholic grandfather, a bunch of malarkey. There’s nothing to it. It’s classic Russian propaganda,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said. “We are not developing biological or chemical weapons inside Ukraine. It’s not happening.”
“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,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki tweeted.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins asked CIA Director William Burns whether the Russian government accusing Ukraine of planning a false flag attack might signal that Putin intends to launch a chemical or biological weapon attack against Ukraine.
“I think it underscores the concern that all of us need to focus on those kinds of issues, whether it’s the potential for the use of chemical weapons, either as a false flag operation or against Ukrainians,” Burns replied. “This is something that, as all of you know very well, is very much a part of Russia’s playbook. They’ve used those weapons against their own citizens, they’ve at least encouraged the use in Syria and elsewhere.”
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The CIA director told Warner that “unlike Russia, which does have chemical weapons and has used them and does do biological weapons research and has for years, Ukraine has neither.”
Rubio asked Burns if he could explain how materials in Ukrainian biolabs could be dangerous while not producing bioweapons.
Burns said dangers include Russia creating false narratives and added that it is important to be careful, even with substances found in civilian public health systems. He stressed that this “is in no way akin to the kind of threats that would be posed by weapons research.”
Rubio responded that “there’s been such a good job done at defeating Russia in the information space, but this is one where they seem to have latched on.”
