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You made the statement, time for you to provide proof that there were indeed biolabs working on biological weapons. No tinfoil hat "proof".

The Russian invasion of Ukraine may put at risk a network of US-linked labs in Ukraine that work with dangerous pathogens, said Robert Pope, the director of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, a 30-year-old Defense Department program that has helped secure the former Soviet Union’s weapons of mass destruction and redirect former bioweapons facilities and scientists toward peaceful endeavors.

The labs in Ukraine are not bioweapons facilities. The US government maintains that they are public and animal health labs operated by host countries. Although a long-running Russian disinformation campaign has painted a picture of a network of US military labs in Ukraine, Georgia, and other former Soviet republics involved in bioweapons or risky research, Pope said the labs conduct peaceful scientific research and disease surveillance. Outside experts have also said Pope’s program is not a covert bioweapons operation.

While the United States isn’t maintaining bioweapons facilities, Pope said, war could put pathogen collections in Ukraine at risk.

“I would say from every facility that we have worked with them in, we have confidence that as long as the electrical power is turned on and the people we have trained are present at the facility, the biosafety officers, that these pathogens are safe and secure to international standards,” Pope said. “Should these facilities be damaged by conflict, that could change.”

The pathogens with which the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program labs work are generally kept frozen, so they can’t replicate and become infectious. The risk the pathogens pose would increase if a building lost power and suffered damage. “If you lose the electrical power, the pathogens in the freezers warm up,” he said. “If the ventilation system is damaged, or the building itself is damaged, and these now ambient-temperature pathogens are able to escape the facility, then they can be potentially infectious in the region around the facility.”

Although Russian officials and media have misrepresented the US-supported labs in Ukraine and other former Soviet countries in disinformation campaigns, Pope doesn’t believe the Russians will deliberately aim weapons at the labs during the invasion.

“I think the Russians know enough about the kinds of pathogens that are stored in biological research laboratories that I don’t think they would deliberately target a laboratory,” Pope said. “But what I do have concerns about is that they would … be accidentally damaged during this Russian invasion.”

The invasion could also provide fodder for new disinformation narratives around the labs, Pope feared. The Russians, he said, “could potentially go to one of these facilities and fabricate something that they call evidence of nefarious activity at the facility.”

The pathogens in Ukrainian labs vary by facility, Pope said, but some can be characterized as presenting a concern in the Ukrainian environment. As an example, he cited African swine fever virus, which is highly contagious in pigs and has caused hundreds of outbreaks in Ukraine since 2012. Some labs, he said, may hold pathogen strains left over from the Soviet bioweapons program, preserved in freezers for research purposes.

“There is no place that still has any of the sort of infrastructure for researching or producing biological weapons,” Pope said. “Scientists being scientists, it wouldn’t surprise me if some of these strain collections in some of these laboratories still have pathogen strains that go all the way back to the origins of that program.”

The program is encouraging host countries to reduce the scope of their pathogen holdings to as small of a collection as necessary for legitimate scientific research, Pope said.

“What we have today and what these countries maintain are small amounts of various pathogens that by and large are things that are collected out of their environment that they need for research to be able to legitimately surveil disease and develop vaccines against,” he said.

This work, Pope said, continued in Ukraine until recently. “They have more pathogens in more places than we recommend,” he said. The program had been helping Ukrainian researchers sift through their frozen pathogen collections, with the goal of persuading the Ukrainians to preserve their genetic information of samples via sequencing before destroying the live samples.

Pope said his program had been close to an agreement with the Ukrainians on consolidating samples, but the invasion has now made that project uncertain. “All of that, obviously, has been derailed here with the recent events,” he said.

The Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, Pope said Thursday, has not had contact with biosafety staff at the labs in Ukraine since the Russian invasion. Phone lines have been jammed in Ukraine, he said, and “I don’t know what kind of contact we will have in these labs in the near future.”

Some Ukrainian labs, like the Ukrainian Ministry of Health’s Public Health Center, Pope said, are major facilities, others small. Some are new, while others date back to the Soviet-era and the country’s bioweapons program.

The US government has worked with 26 facilities in Ukraine. Before the invasion, the program provided direct material support to six Ukrainian labs. The program also provides biosafety and scientific mentorship training to Ministry of Health personnel throughout the country.

. There is in fact biolabs on the Ukraine border next to Russia. Those labs will produce the next "panicdemic" and this time they will achieve the death numbers they hoped the Covid one would attain.

Loosing the dollar is what's at risk when the US pushes all in. The last two decades of US Russian foreign policy too often benefited short term special interests over the interests of American citizens. These policies thrust Russia into China's open arms and are a obvious mistake.

You made the statement, time for you to provide proof that there were indeed biolabs working on biological weapons. No tinfoil hat "proof".

U.S. cooperation with Ukraine under the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program was expanded Aug. 29 with an agreement to use U.S. CTR funds to improve security for pathogens stored at biological research and health facilities in the former Soviet republic.

Under the agreement, CTR funds will for the first time flow directly to projects aimed at securing pathogen strains and sensitive biological knowledge within Ukraine. The United States also will work to improve Ukrainian capabilities to detect, diagnose, and treat outbreaks of infectious diseases, as well as determine whether outbreaks are natural or the result of bioterrorism.

The agreement was signed during the visit to Kiev of a high-level U.S. delegation led by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

Among the facilities in Ukraine intended to receive security upgrades are those once linked to the Soviet-era anti-plague network, which continue to store libraries of naturally occuring pathogens for the purposes of research and public health. Andy Fisher, spokesperson for Lugar, told Arms Control Today on Sept. 15 the anti-plague facilities “were threats and they are threats,” given the risk that poor security could allow terrorists access to pathogens. Fisher also cited the possibility that outdated operating procedures and equipment could result in the unintentional leakage of pathogens from these facilities, endangering the public health of the region.

Cooperation under the new agreement will not be limited to physical security over pathogens. Funds also will be available for the peaceful employment of scientists whose skills and financial insecurity could render them potential targets for states or independent groups looking to acquire bioweapons capabilities. In addition, the agreement includes provisions for cooperation between U.S. and Ukrainian epidemiological laboratories in diagnosing disease outbreaks. Toward that end, pathogens from Ukrainian health and research facilities will be shared with U.S. partner laboratories. Under a CTR agreement with Azerbaijan, the United States last month also received a transfer of pathogens from similar facilities in that former Soviet republic.

As a first step toward implementation of the agreement, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) will conduct an assessment of biological facilities in Ukraine to determine what sites will receive assistance. Funds within the current DTRA budget will cover the assessment phase; additional implementation funds could be appropriated in fiscal year 2007 and beyond. As the Aug. 29 agreement falls under the established CTR framework, neither Congress nor the Ukrainian Rada will need to provide further authorization before implementation begins.

Negotiations on the Aug. 29 agreement spanned more than a year. One administration official who requested anonymity told Arms Control Today that inter-Ukrainian political and bureaucratic hurdles were surmounted by a combination of strong U.S.-Ukrainian relations and the presence of the high-level U.S. delegation. A press release from Lugar’s office specifically credited then-Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko with breaking a “log jam within Ukrainian government bureaucracy.”

Who said the US should push "all in"?

So if the owner of this page censors you, he works for the government? Or is contracted?

No, that isn't how it works.

Let me try to sort through what you've typed. It doesn't appear English is your first language.

Adam Smith's writings call for the "invisible hand of the market" to regulate commerce rather than government. If there is a void in the market, such as lack of sellers, that the potential for profit will cause new entries into the market.

You'll have a very, very hard time making the case that Adam Smith is for either forcing existing media to provide you with a platform for which you can say whatever you wish. Private companies are of no obligation to provide you with an audience. Furthermore, you'll have a hard time convincing the world that Adam Smith would believe that the vast number of websites and media groups is a "monopoly". In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find anti-trust legislation to advocated anywhere in "The Wealth of Nations".

But the annual revenue of every society is always precisely equal to the exchangeable value of the whole annual produce of its industry, or rather is precisely the same thing with that exchangeable value. As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.

So you post a literal conspiracy website? I specifically said no tinfoil stuff.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/veterans-today/

And Putin is shutting down media, blocking social media, and is contemplating the Russian equivalent of martial law. He's attacked a sovereign nation, which he previously guaranteed the security of. Yet there are people here singing his praise?

"All it takes for evil to thrive in the world is for good men to do nothing."

Ukraine isn't a utopia and corruption is well-documented. But the citizens don't deserve this kind of treatment by Putin. [bleep] Biden. [bleep] Putin. And [bleep] anybody that supports either one of them.