Back Story Newsletter
Good morning,
War in Ukraine / Chemical Weapons
A word this morning on the threat of chemical/biological warfare threats in Ukraine. If you find the discussion complicated it is, but it’s part of Russia’s misleading disinformation campaign and so let me try to quickly walk you through it.
This week Russia accused Ukraine and the U.S., without proof of carrying out military biological activities in Ukraine.
A senior North Atlantic Treaty Organization official said there are serious concerns that Russia is setting the stage to use chemical weapons in the war-torn country.
So which is it? Russia is a threat or the U.S.?
Firstly the U.S. does not deploy chemical/biological weapons. The U.S. is in full compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological Weapons Convention “and does not develop or possess such weapons anywhere,” White House spokesperson Jen Psaki wrote, before saying Russia has a documented record of using chemical weapons.
And the U.S. has not used chemical or biological weapons in any of its wars or been even accused of doing so.
But the documented use of Russia deploying chemical weapons includes the poisoning of a former double agent with the nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury England in 2018, and then again the poisoning of opposition leader Alexey Navalny in August of 2020, again with Novichok.
Human Rights Watch found that at least 85 chemical weapons attacks occurred in Syria between 2013 and 2018, the majority of which they blamed on the Russian-backed Syrian government.
So Russia produces chemical-bio weapons, and has shown it will use them.
What about Ukraine then?
The allegations of U.S. run labs boils down to labs that were once part of the Soviet Unions massive weapons programs. I know because as a reporter, I was in them in places like Kazakhstan where anthrax was blown into the warheads of Satan missiles pointed at places like London and New York.
After the fall of the Soviet Union those labs were largely unsecured and the U.S. spent millions of dollars under its CTR (Cooperative Threat Reduction) program to lock down and neutralize the materials and retrain scientists so the weapons would never fall into wrong hands.
Some of those labs were also in Ukraine. My highly placed former U.S. Defense source says the labs Russia is referring to, are Ministry of Health Public Health labs that do diagnostic testing for endemic diseases.
Were any of them former weapons labs of the USSR?
Source: “Not directly. A couple were part of the Soviet Anti-plague system which collected pathogens from disease outbreaks. The most deadly of these were fed into the weapons labs”.
Anti-plague institutes collected samples from natural plague outbreaks in animals, and the Soviets then took those samples and tried to use them in their weapons programs, developing anthrax that was more deadly and deployable.
And those anti-plague institutes were later turned into regular health labs by the U.S. (which remember what I said about the CTR program) which paid to have scientists retrained and the plague samples destroyed.
So yes there are labs in Ukraine but they long stopped being weapons labs for the USSR and became normal health facilities.
Finally, what you need to know is that Russia now claiming they are still producing weapons, could be a precursor to Russia deploying chemical weapons on the battle field and blaming American or Ukraine.
It’s a frightening threat, and one to be taken seriously by Russia which has lied in every chapter of this war, including its intention not to launch the conflict in the first place. And Russia needs an easy way to clear big cities of resistance. Just like it did in Syria.
Putin has shown he won’t hesitate to kill civilians caught or fleeing this war. And that may include the use of unconventional weapons.
On Back Story w/Dana Lewis Podcast this week a compelling and crystal clear interview with former U.S. Army Commander Ben Hodges, on why he thinks we need to escalate assistance to Ukraine.
Hodges says we simply can’t allow these cities to be destroyed and Putin needs to be stopped now not later. “If only we had done this or that” is something we can’t live with later.
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1016881/10224513
If you prefer a video version it’s here:
Part 2
Have a good Friday and weekend. I will write soon. Dana
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