Now, almost 17 years later, questions about the deal - and the United States' broader support for biodefense laboratories in Ukraine - have surfaced amid concerns about chemical or biological weapons being used in Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The Russian government has been claiming for weeks that the U.S. government is funding bioweapon labs in Ukraine, justifying its invasion as an effort to stop a joint American-Ukrainian plan to wage biological warfare against Russia.
One concern among analysts and U.S. officials is that Russia could be laying the groundwork for using chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine and giving itself plausible deniability by blaming Ukrainian labs.
Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines testified earlier this month that "We do not assess that Ukraine is pursuing either biological weapons or nuclear weapons." United Nations High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Izumi Nakamitsu similarly said the international group is "Not aware" of any biological weapons program in Ukraine.
After months of negotiations, the Pentagon and the Ukrainian ministry in August 2005 struck an agreement under which the U.S. agreed to send aid to Ukraine to fund security upgrades at Ukrainian facilities in which pathogens were stored and to support Ukrainian research on fighting the spread of diseases.
The 2005 agreement extended to Ukraine the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which was established in 1991 to secure and dismantle weapons of mass destruction and their associated infrastructure in the former states of the Soviet Union.
There may have been some U.S. funding to support Ukrainian biodefense labs before 2005, but it would have been small and through the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine, Weber also said.
https://justthenews.com/government/security/biden-obama-and-ukraine-biolabs-separating-fact-fiction
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