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[–]bootylicious 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Thank you, but this:

Here is the admission that the Ukrainian labs are very far from harmless, and at a minimum contain hazardous material that can be used as a biological weapon

Is false.

So do bio labs exist inside Ukraine, and is the US supporting them?

Yes, and yes. 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. Do the Ukraine laboratories store dangerous biological agents?

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.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/11/russia-biological-weapon-claim-us-un-ukraine-bio-labs-explainer

This is an ADDITIONAL reason Russian should not invade Ukraine, or continue bombing civilian buildings.