Let’s first know what are bio weapons and why is it dangerous and controversial to have them. Under UN law, bio weapons or biological weapons are disseminate disease causing organisms or toxins to harm or kill humans, animals or plants.
Biological weapons are dangerous because they can be deadly and highly contagious. Disease caused by such weapons wouldn’t confine themselves to national borders and could spread quickly around the world.
Knowing the danger, UN under UN the biological weapons convention (BWC) effectively prohibits the development, production, acquisition, transfer, stockpiling and the use of biological and toxins weapons. This was the first multilateral disarmament treaty banning entire category of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
Countries which are known to posses biological weapons currently are the US, Russia, North Korea, Iran, China, UK, Israel and Ukarine which has joined the list. Countries like Germany, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Japan are said to have destroyed them but had them previously.
Countries which have ever used biological weapons include Germany in world war II, Japan during world war II in korea and China, US during world war II in Japan, Vietnam war, Korea war, Iraq by Saddam in Kurdistan region and on Iranian soldiers and Syria in yet to be verified incident in 2013 which killed over 1500 people.
Ukraine biological weapons program dates back to Soviet Union era which was inherited after the break up of Soviet Union in 1991. Ukraine inherited the third largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction from Soviet Union and they are said to have been destroyed in 2005 with the help of Pentagon and world health organization.
Under 2005 agreement, Pentagon assisted several Ukrainian public health laboratories with improving the security of dangerous pathogens and technology used to research them. Such efforts are said to have been supported by many countries and world health organization (WHO).
When talking Reuters on Thursday, the world health organization acknowledged that it had advised Ukraine to destroy high threat pathogens housed in its public labs to prevent any potential spill over that would spread diseases among the population.
On Thursday, US under secretary of state for political affairs Victoria Nuland acknowledged the presence and operation of bio labs in Ukraine during a senator hearing when she was asked by senator Marco Rubio whether US had knowledge about the existence of bio labs in Ukraine.
But US representative to UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield denied Russia’s claims that Ukraine has 30 US funded bio labs as she accused Russia of attempting to use security council to legitimise disinformation and deceive people to justify president Vladimir Putin’s war of choice against Ukarine.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield was joined by White House and US media in general which accused Russia of lying as pretext to use chemical weapons in on going war in Ukraine and accused anyone who come out to question their line of defense as traitor of US.
All this started when Russia’s military said that it had discovered about 30 US funded bio labs in Ukraine and called urgent UN security council meeting to discuss the matter. China also called on US to tell the truth about its biological activities in Ukraine as it asked for investigation during UN security council meeting held on Friday.
Former US Congress woman and Democrat presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard was accused of being traitor who should be tried for treason for lending credibility to Russia’s accusations that US funded 30 bio labs in Ukraine.
In a Monday morning tweet, Tulsi Gabbard responded to Sunday’s remark by Republican senator Mitt Romney, who accused her statement calling for US funded bio labs in Ukraine to be shut down as “treasonous lies” that could cost lives.
In series of posts, Tulsi Gabbard requested that Mitt Romney provide evidence that there’s no US funded bio labs in Ukraine. She also said if Mitt Romney couldn’t do so should apologize and resign from senate.
Tulsi Gabbard on Twitter criticised US government for helping bio labs researching pathogens in Ukraine and else where in the world and said they should be shut down.
According to sheet released by US defense department, US invested about 200 million dollars in Ukraine since 2005 to support 46 Ukrainian laboratories and research into disease threats. But some US officials have described many theories making a round about presence of US funded bio labs in Ukraine as laughable and an attempt from Russia to justify its own horrific action in Ukraine.
Even if US had funded 30 bio labs in Ukraine as claimed by Russia, recently countries like US which is a permanent member of UN security council and a party to biological weapons convention has developed manners of denying and doubling down on any issue that may bring trouble to itself on International stage.
And we think Russia brought up the matter knowing that US will deny it since US funding 30 bio labs in Ukraine could destroy it’s efforts to collect support for Ukraine in its on going war with Russia.
