DISINFO: Pentagon moves bio-projects from Ukraine
SUMMARY
According to the information available, the Pentagon is actively transferring finished research within the framework of Ukrainian projects to the countries of Central Asia and Eastern Europe. At the same time, cooperation between the US Department of Defense and the countries of the African and Asia-Pacific region - Kenya, Cambodia, Singapore, Thailand - is increasing.
Countries that already have laboratories with a high level of biological isolation are of particular interest to the US military department.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation which advances the narrative that the US has biolabs in Ukraine as a part of biological warfare, this time with the new spin that the labs are being moved to central Asia and Eastern Europe. The claim about the US having biolabs in Ukraine has been disproved many times by EUvsDisinfo.
This is a years-long disinformation campaign by pro-Kremlin sources. The US Department of State has confirmed that the United States does not own or operate any chemical or biological laboratories in Ukraine. According to the UN, there are no bio-projects run by the US Department of Defence. Andy Weber, a member of the Arms Control Association Board of Directors and a former Assistant Secretary of Defence for nuclear, chemical, and biological defence programmes confirms that there are no US biolabs in Ukraine.
Conversely, the United States founded its "Biological Threat Reduction Programme" in the 1990s to reduce the risk from biological weapons that had been left behind by the USSR in countries including Ukraine. Under this programme certain labs receive funding from the US for modernisation and equipment, but are managed locally, not by the US. See more cases such as a-biolab-leak-would-benefit-the-us, Ukraine-disease-outbreaks-linked-to-activity-of-us-biolabs, US-biolabs-were-forced-to-clean-up-their-tracks-after-the-russian-operation.