Russia's Lies About Bioweapons in Ukraine Make the World Less Safe

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Dr. Angela Rasmussen
@angie_rasmussen
Maybe you heard there were biological labs in Ukraine & wonder why the US invests in “risky” pathogen research in other countries? It’s actually really necessary.

Fantastic piece by @marynmck on the critical importance of cooperative threat reduction.

wired.com
Russia’s Lies About Bioweapons in Ukraine Make the World Less Safe
Ukraine’s research labs are vital to global health. Disinformation aimed at their work puts everyone in danger.
6:28 AM · Mar 29, 2022

https://www.wired.com/story/russias-lies-about-bioweapons-in-ukraine-make-the-world-less-safe/

SINCE THE INVASION of Ukraine began a month ago, representatives of Russia have unleashed an avalanche of disinformation to justify this aggression, claiming they plan to liberate breakaway regions, restore Russia’s pre-Soviet boundaries, or rescue Ukrainians from a “drug-addled” government. Some assertions are comically outlandish—“denazifying” a country led by a Jewish president, for instance—but one strand of disinfo has sent a chill though biosecurity specialists and Cold War veterans. That is the claim that Ukraine manufactures biological weapons in laboratories funded by the United States.

This conspiracy theory worries experts because it is false, and because it could provide cover for Russia deploying biological weapons of its own. But its least speculative and most sinister threat is that it endangers the the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, a long-standing international effort that actually prevents bioweapons labs from operating—while allowing countries to develop the capacity to respond to other threats, from destructive livestock and crop pathogens to deadly diseases such as Ebola and Covid.

“These labs are being misrepresented,” says Hayley Severance emphatically. Severance, now deputy vice president for global biological policy at the nonpartisan think tank NTI, was formerly a Department of Defense adviser working on the threat-reduction program, which for decades has supported these research labs in Ukraine. “There is no nefarious biological weapon development activity, ongoing in Ukraine, supported by the US,” she adds. “That is a false narrative that has been part of the Russian playbook for decades.”

The threat-reduction effort dates back to the eve of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In fact, Russia was its first beneficiary: The program’s initial aim, which the soon-to-be-dissolved USSR assented to, was arms control. The program deployed billions in US funding to destroy or safely store the enormous quantities of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons the Soviet Union had amassed.

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