Here are the Documents the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine Scrubbed on 'Biological Threat Reduction' Labs

"The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine explained the operation of the laboratories and accused the Russians of spreading disinformation about their nature in 2020."

Russian accusations of a U.S.-funded and administered 'biowarfares' laboratory research program in Ukraine has led to rampant speculation about the nature of these Pentagon-funded laboratories.

The Russians' insistence that it has evidence of such a bioweapons program has become a major hurdle at the diplomatic negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Belarus.

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov charged at a press conference last week that "the Pentagon built two biowarfare labs and they have been developing pathogens there in Kyiv and in Odessa.” Lavrov also compared the presence of the laboratories to the United States' Weapons of Mass Destruction program allegations that led it to invade Iraq in 2003 and topple dictator Saddam Hussein.

Leonid Slutsky, head of the Duma Committee on International Affairs and a member of the Russian delegation at the talks with Ukraine, argued that the purported development of biological weapons components “confirm that the Russian Federation had good reasons for conducting a special military operation to demilitarize Ukraine."

Major General Igor Konashenkov, an official representative of the Russian Ministry of Defense, charged on Sunday that “components of biological weapons were being developed in Ukraine, in close proximity to Russian territory."

Amid the Russians' accusations, the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine has scrubbed a number of documents related to the Ukrainian "Biological Threat Reduction" program.

Those documents have been retrieved and can be read below. The documents show both the locations of the Ukrainian laboratories and the Department of Defense's listing as a "donor" to the program.

Ukraine Embassy Documents on Biological Threat Reduction Program by Kyle Becker on Scribd

"The Electronic Integrated Disease Surveillance System (EIDSS) is a software system which is designed to strengthen monitoring and prevention of human and animal diseases within the One Health concept, and facilitate compliance of International Health Regulations (IHR) 2005," the embassy document states.

In 2011 EIDSS was introduced in Ukraine with installations at the following sites:

• Central Sanitary-Epidemiology Station in Kyiv (CSES)

• Ukrainian Research Anti-Plague Institute in Odessa (URAPI)

• Vinnitsa Oblast Sanitary-Epidemiological Station

• Vinnitsa City Sanitary- Epidemiological Station

• Kalynivska Rayon Sanitary- Epidemiological Station in Vinnitsa Oblast

• Zhitomir Oblast Sanitary- Epidemiological Station

• Khmelnitska Oblast Sanitary- Epidemiological Station as regional sites

"The main objective of the program is to implement EIDSS at the sites of the State Sanitary-Epidemiological Service of Ukraine for monitoring and outbreak prevention ofdiseases including those caused by Especially Dangerous Pathogens," the document adds.

The Department of Defense expenditures as listed for select Ukrainian laboratories.