Why did we have bio-labs in Ukraine?

Despite Russian and Chinese propaganda, is it really wrong to ask?

Russia’s bioweapon conspiracy theory finds support in US

Of course Russia (not to mention China) would have a propaganda field-day with this. 

But as the mainstream media smears anyone who dares inquire about US-funded bioweapon or “biological threat” (depending on whom you ask) research in Ukraine, it does bear the question: Why was the United States funding any biological research in Ukraine at all? 

More so, who on earth among American decision-makers, whether elected officials or invisible bureaucrats, thought it would be a good idea to continue these activities in a country that over the last eight years has suffered the turmoil of an insurgency that has taken the lives of over 14000 of its citizens?  And all while the winds of war blew steadily across the border from Moscow. 

At the very least, did they not predict the potential feeding of the Russian propaganda beast?  Even more disturbing, how could they have not taken measures to secure these highly dangerous infectious diseases BEFORE a Russian invasion that for months the Biden administration and NATO said was inevitable? 

Why did our government, via the legacy media, deny the very existence of such labs until Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland contradicted that denial in sworn testimony before the United States Senate?  And why now does the administration respond by either smearing those few intrepid journalists still daring to ask some pretty fair questions as “QAnon conspiracy theorists” or “far-right extremists” or “Putin-lovers,” or spinning the whole story as badly as the Russians? (Though more slyly so.) 

Is it not fair to ask why we have been funding this program in general?  And if it was to secure old Soviet biological weapons stockpiles, as the latest government-scripted talking points tell us, why has it taken two decades to do so?  And if they were made secure long ago, why did the research program continue?   

Notice, the so-called “fact-checks” that the legacy media are holding up as their counter-programming go-to are no more than carbon-copies of Biden Administration, State Department, Defense Department, Intelligence Community, and even Ukrainian security service (SBU) talking points.  They make no bones about it.  You see it right in the article linked above from the Associated Press (via Yahoo! News), in which the writers lament citizens and their journalist colleagues questioning the government’s activities “despite rebuttals from independent scientists, Ukrainian leaders, and officials at the White House and Pentagon.” (Italics mine.)

Oh, well that solves that then.  Nothing to see here.  Seriously, is that journalism?  How can a fact-check be in any way independent or legitimate when it simply repeats government talking points as “fact.”  Even when those government talking points turn out to be true, it is imperative that that truth be established through independent sources.  It’s basic journalistic integrity.  Questioning the government doesn’t undermine trust; on the contrary, it enhances it.  Best to follow the old Reagan dictum: Trust but verify.  What happened to the good ol’ days when the scions of the Fourth Estate went all the way to the Supreme Court to print Ellsberg’s “Pentagon Papers” to counter the government’s false Vietnam War narrative?  Didn’t Steven Spielberg make a movie about that portraying the owner and editor of the Washington Post as heroes?

Hmm…

We can support Ukrainian liberty, but is it not a good idea to protect our own right along with it?

Whatever the case, let’s hope these dangerous biological agents don’t fall into the wrong hands—like all those Chechen militants now fighting for both sides, some of whom have ties to al-Qaeda and ISIS.     

 Alex Holstein is the co-author of Warfighter: The Story of an American Fighting Man, due out May 15, 2022, from Lyons Press.  He holds an MSc in Russian and Post-Soviet Studies from the London School of Economics, where he wrote his thesis on the Soviet KGB.