{"id":206746,"date":"2022-03-14T12:00:53","date_gmt":"2022-03-14T12:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=206746"},"modified":"2022-03-10T04:17:26","modified_gmt":"2022-03-10T04:17:26","slug":"victoria-nuland-ukraine-has-biological-research-facilities-worried-russia-may-seize-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/03\/victoria-nuland-ukraine-has-biological-research-facilities-worried-russia-may-seize-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Victoria Nuland: Ukraine Has “Biological Research Facilities,” Worried Russia May Seize Them"},"content":{"rendered":"
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9 Mar 2022 – The neocon’s confession sheds critical light on the U.S. role in Ukraine, and raises vital questions about these labs that deserve answers.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland testifies before a Senate Foreign Relation Committee hearing on Ukraine on March 08, 2022 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Kevin Dietsch\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

Self-anointed “fact-checkers\u201d in the U.S.<\/strong> corporate press have spent two weeks<\/a> mocking as<\/a> disinformation<\/a> and a false conspiracy theory<\/a> the claim that Ukraine has biological weapons labs, either alone or with U.S. support. They never presented any evidence for their ruling \u2014 how could they possibly know? and how could they prove the negative? \u2014 but nonetheless they invoked their characteristically authoritative, above-it-all tone of self-assurance and self-arrogated right to decree the truth, definitively labelling such claims false.<\/p>\n

Claims that Ukraine currently maintains dangerous biological weapons labs came from Russia as well as China. The Chinese Foreign Ministry this month claimed<\/a>: “The US has 336 labs in 30 countries under its control, including 26 in Ukraine alone.\u201d The Russian Foreign Ministry asserted<\/a> that \u201cRussia obtained documents proving that Ukrainian biological laboratories located near Russian borders worked on development of components of biological weapons.\u201d Such assertions deserve the same level of skepticism as U.S. denials: namely, none of it should be believed to be true or false absent evidence. Yet U.S. fact-checkers dutifully and reflexively sided with the U.S. Government to declare such claims “disinformation\u201d and to mock them as QAnon conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for this propaganda racket masquerading as neutral and high-minded fact-checking, the neocon official long in charge of U.S. policy in Ukraine testified on Monday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and strongly suggested that such claims are, at least in part, true. Yesterday afternoon, Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), hoping to debunk growing claims that there are chemical weapons labs in Ukraine, smugly asked Nuland: \u201cDoes Ukraine have chemical or biological weapons?\u201d<\/p>\n

Rubio undoubtedly expected a flat denial by Nuland, thus providing further “proof\u201d that such speculation is dastardly Fake News emanating from the Kremlin, the CCP and QAnon. Instead, Nuland did something completely uncharacteristic for her, for neocons, and for senior U.S. foreign policy officials: for some reason, she told a version of the truth. Her answer visibly stunned Rubio, who \u2014 as soon as he realized the damage she was doing to the U.S. messaging campaign by telling the truth \u2014 interrupted her and demanded that she instead affirm that if a biological attack were to occur, everyone should be \u201c100% sure\u201d that it was Russia who did it. Grateful for the life raft, Nuland told Rubio he was right.<\/p>\n

But Rubio’s clean-up act came too late. When asked whether Ukraine possesses \u201cchemical or biological weapons,\u201d Nuland did not deny this: at all. She instead \u2014 with palpable pen-twirling discomfort and in halting speech, a glaring contrast to her normally cocky style of speaking in obfuscatory State Department officialese \u2014 acknowledged: \u201cuh, Ukraine has, uh, biological research facilities.\u201d Any hope to depict such “facilities\u201d as benign or banal was immediately destroyed by the warning she quickly added: \u201cwe are now in fact quite concerned that Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to, uh, gain control of [those labs], so we are working with the Ukrainiahhhns [sic] on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach\u201d \u2014 [interruption by Sen. Rubio]:<\/p>\n