Thread by @blumscientific

So we heard a lot about "#BiolabsinUkraine" and an alleged biological weapons program carried out in them funded by the US. A thread about which this is nuts and a look back in history.

Once upon a time there was a country called the Soviet Union. A country with vast amounts of nuclear weapons, chemical weapons and a hidden biological weapons program. Due to historical events that we all know the SU was about to break apart.

Lithuania declared independence in March 1990 and other republics of the USSR followed. August 1991 saw an attempted coup by communist hard-liners trying to take control of the country from Mikhail Gorbachev. The coup failed and the SU ended to exist on 25/26 December 1991.

When the SU disappeared, 3,200 strategic nuclear warheads remained in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus creating three new nuclear weapon states.

All this happened at a moment of great political instability in Russia and the other successor states of the SU and triggered grave concerns in the USA about the safety and security of these weapons.

Now it's time to meet two important former US senators: Sam Nunn (D-GA) and Richard Lugar (R-IN) who initiated the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Program also known as the Nunn-Lugar Act (yes there was a time bipartisan initiatives were possible)

The CTR aimed at helping Russia and the other successor states to secure and dismantle nuclear warheads but also helped securing chemical and biological sites and weapon materials. Originally initiated for a four year period CTR is still around today.

If you have time I recommend the video of the 25th Anniversary event of the Nunn-Lugar act (Dec 2016): c-span.org/video/?419918-…

An interesting example for CTR work on biological weapon is the cleanup at the former bioweapon test site Aralsk-7 on Vozrozhdeniya Island located in the disappearing Aral Lake between between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. washingtonpost.com/archive/politi…

But to be clear: A lot of CTR money went into projects in Russia itself - not only the former soviet republics around it. This is also true for biological laboratories including the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology VECTOR. globalbiodefense.com/2021/10/17/loo…

VECTOR is one of the two remaining depositaries for the smallpox virus and home of the EpiVacCorona peptide-based vaccine.

In June 2002 the G8 (yes Russia was part of it at that time) initiated the Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction (Global Partnership). gpwmd.com

The work focused on Russia and the other former soviet republics securing and destroying WMD and related materials (such as nuclear naval propulsion). The GP was extended beyond the former SU in 2008 and extended the initially 10 year during in 2010.

Back to US funded CTR programs which are executed by the US Department of State and the DoD Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA).

Their primary objective in the bio field (since the 1990s) is to increase biosafety and biosecurity by enabling research and public health laboratories to counter the threat of outbreaks of infectious diseases adhering to high biosafety standards.

This has nothing to do with biological weapons. But aren't they working with pathogens you might ask. Yes they do as do hundreds of other labs worldwide (incl Russia) for legitimate purposes.

We have seen documents that allegedly point to biological weapons such as this one. But all the strains listed here are of no great concern. Do you notice some of them are marked "ATCC" or "BKM" (VKM)?

This indicates the straines are form the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) or the All-Russian Collection of Microorganisms (BKM/VKM). These culture collections provide microorganisms for research and diagnostic purposes and not biological weapons. vkm.ru

Yes a lot of toxic chemicals find use in the chemical industry - but this does not make them a general producer of chemical weapons. Same here. We see legitimate research and public health activities assisted through the CTR program. ua.usembassy.gov/embassy/kyiv/s…