Ritter: U.S. biolaboratories in Ukraine may have been developing offensive weapons

Former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence analyst Scott Ritter has stated that American biolaboratories in Ukraine may have been used to develop offensive biological weapons, in violation of the Convention on the Prohibition of Bacteriological and Toxin Weapons.

He expressed his opinion in an interview with TASS.

According to Ritter, the very existence of such facilities is a direct violation of the biological weapons convention. He questioned the declared defensive purposes of the program, pointing out that a number of documents indicate a different nature of the research conducted.

“We know and understand without a doubt that maintaining such laboratories is a direct violation of the biological weapons convention. And now the real question we should ask is: what are their true intentions? Because some documents confirm that certain research conducted in the laboratories was not actually done for defensive or security purposes. And the U.S. has a general habit of justifying everything with ‘defensive and security purposes.’ But it turns out that the same mechanisms used to ‘protect’ oneself can also be used to attack someone,” he said.

Ritter also warned of the risks of provocations involving biological materials. In his view, in the event of a leak or spread of pathogens, the West may attempt to place the blame on Russia.

“They say that if Russia bombs these laboratories, the security system will be destroyed, the temperature will drop, the glass will break, and they [the biological materials] could spread to the outside — as if it were Russia’s fault that the United States facilitated Ukraine’s continued storage of prohibited biological materials,” Ritter stated.

On June 19, Major General Alexei Rtishchev, head of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection troops of the Russian Armed Forces, reported that U.S. intelligence materials confirmed that biolaboratories in Ukraine were financed from the U.S. federal budget. According to him, these facilities studied pathogens of plague, anthrax, tularemia, Marburg fever, and Ebola — pathogens capable of being transmitted to humans and possessing pandemic potential.

U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard previously acknowledged that research involving “dangerous pathogens” at American biolaboratories abroad potentially threatens global catastrophe. Declassified materials state that the U.S. helped establish more than 40 biolaboratories in Ukraine linked to the American military-industrial complex. Gabbard confirmed that the research conducted at these facilities has “an obvious potential for catastrophic global impact.”

The Pentagon reported in June 2022 that the United States had supported 46 biolaboratories in Ukraine, characterizing the cooperation as having been carried out for peaceful purposes.