{"id":1114,"date":"2023-02-09T12:37:48","date_gmt":"2023-02-09T17:37:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/?p=1114"},"modified":"2023-02-09T12:38:08","modified_gmt":"2023-02-09T17:38:08","slug":"obama-visited-ukraine-to-unveil-security-upgrades-for-soviet-era-antiplague-labs-containing-deadly-pathogens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/?p=1114","title":{"rendered":"Obama Visited Ukraine To Unveil \u2018Security\u2019 Upgrades For Soviet-Era \u2018Antiplague\u2019 Labs Containing Deadly Pathogens"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A recently unearthed 2005 article from the Washington Post reveals that 44th President Barack Obama, then a U.S. Senator, visited Ukraine in the mid 2000\u2019s to announce<\/a> that the United States would be funding \u201csecurity\u201d improvements at multiple Ukrainian \u201cantiplague\u201d laboratories that housed dangerous and lethal pathogens from the Soviet era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the article<\/a>, published on August 30, 2005 and written by seasoned Washington Post reporter Joby Warrick<\/a>, both the U.S. and Ukraine agreed on a joint effort to \u201cprevent the spread of biological weapons\u201d with a signed agreement that allowed for Congress to send Ukraine money to be spent on \u201csecurity upgrades\u201d for a network of Cold War-era Ukranian biological institutes<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Warrick reported that the biological facilities housed \u201cdangerous microbes\u201d such as Anthrax and the plague.<\/a> When Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, the facilities reportedly used the pathogens as part of a secret Soviet bioweapons program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Making it a bipartisan excursion, then-Sen. Obama was accompanied by former Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, during the visit to Ukraine. The Senators met with former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Then-Senator Obama and Senator Richard Lugar visited Kiev in 2005 to announce that the U.S. would be funding “security” upgrades for a network of Ukrainian biolabs, home to lethal pathogens including Anthrax and the plague. On the trip, he met with Ukrainian President Yushchenko. pic.twitter.com\/1X7VaPKODF<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 Andrew (@whiteaf5) February 7, 2023<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe agreement, the result of more than a year of negotiations, was announced by Sens. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) during a visit to the Ukrainian capital, Kiev.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obama, who had just been elected the previous year, \u201ccredited Ukraine\u2019s reformist leaders, ushered into power by last fall\u2019s Orange Revolution, with breaking bureaucratic resistance to the pact,\u201d wrote Warrick for the Washington Post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne lab to receive funding is the I.I. Mechnikov Antiplague Scientific and Research Institute, in the Black Sea port city of Odessa. The institute was part of a Cold War network of \u2018antiplague\u2019 stations that supplied highly lethal pathogens to Soviet bioweapons factories,\u201d the Post reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Staffer Mark Helmke at the time stated that \u201cThis agreement will allow us to begin addressing the problems faced by the Odessa antiplague institute and places like it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Helmke said the U.S. aimed to fund the Ukranian biolab security upgrades in order to \u201csupport peaceful research by Ukranian scientists to fight the spread of natural diseases.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The visit to Ukraine was briefly \u201cdisrupted\u201d when local Ukrainian authorities refused to permit the U.S. delegation\u2019s military plane to leave Russia and demanded to search the aircraft. Obama\u2019s flight was eventually allowed to take place and Russia\u2019s Foreign Ministry later apologized over the incident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the onset of the 2022 Invasion of Ukraine, internationally accredited fact checkers\u00a0claimed<\/a>\u00a0that no \u201cU.S. biolabs in Ukraine funded by the U.S. government\u201d exist, that the treaty regarding U.S. funding for \u201csecurity\u201d upgrades at Ukranian biolabs was only for the purpose of \u201cpreventing biological threats,\u201d and that any notions to the contrary amount to a \u201cRussian disinformation campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In May of 2020, the The Security Service of Ukraine put out a statement dismissing concerns over the Cold War-era network of Ukrainian biolabs:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRecently, \u2018fake news\u2019 about the alleged activities of American military biological laboratories in Ukraine has been spread in the media and social networks,\u201d the agency said. \u201cNo foreign biological laboratories operate in Ukraine. Statements recently made by individual politicians are not true and are a deliberate distortion of the facts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The discussion of chemical and biological weapons in Ukraine has surfaced recently in light of new unconfirmed video which purportedly shows the armed forces of Ukraine deploying chemical weapons against Russian soldiers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One video, posted by popular pro-Russia Twitter user Donbass Devushka, appears to show a Russian soldier descend into involuntary convulsions and drowning after being hit with what seems to be a chemical gas, Valiant News\u00a0reported<\/a>.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Original article: https:\/\/valiantnews.com\/2023\/02\/obama-once-visited-ukrainian-antiplague-labs-containing-deadly-pathogens\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recently unearthed 2005 article from the Washington Post reveals that 44th President Barack Obama, then a U.S. Senator, visited Ukraine in the mid 2000\u2019s to announce that the United States would be funding \u201csecurity\u201d improvements at multiple Ukrainian \u201cantiplague\u201d laboratories that housed dangerous and lethal pathogens from the Soviet era. According to the article, published on August 30, 2005 and written by seasoned Washington Post reporter Joby Warrick, both the U.S. and Ukraine agreed on a joint effort to \u201cprevent the spread of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":89,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-threat-to-america"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/89"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1115,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114\/revisions\/1115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}