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According to the Russian Federation Permanent Representative to the UN Office in Geneva, Gennady Gatilov, extensive dangerous biological military weapons and research programs have been found in Ukraine.

Many of these highly exotic projects are being funded by the United States, under the Pentagon’s Defence Threat Reduction Agency (“DTRA”).  However, other alleged bioweapons programs and their facilities are also funded and steered by Germany’s Foreign Ministry and the German Armed Forces indicating that NATO member involvement in Ukraine is much deeper than previously thought.

After extensive research including numerous well-documented sources, it now appears, as suspected, that Ukraine has become a NATO outsourcing destination for biological weapons research and development.

It has now been confirmed and demonstrated that the US Department of Defence and its subsidiary DTRA are funding offshore defence biological and scientific research projects.  The evidence suggests that these activities are “dual-use” whereby biosafety research is interchangeable with the development of internationally prohibited bioweapons. Because of the inherent ambiguity of this area of research, such programs and their facilities have proven to be impervious to any meaningful oversight or international inspection regime.

Background to the German-Ukraine Relationship

To better understand how deeply German interests are invested in Ukraine it’s important to firstly consider the German-Ukraine relationship.

Germany is Ukraine’s largest civilian bilateral donor with payments amounting to around US$220 million. For comparison purposes, the United States gave just under US$200 million. Additionally, Germany makes contributions through the European Union (“EU”).  In 2018-2019 Germany made the largest contribution, €400 million, via the EU.

Germany has also been supporting Ukraine’s political and economic “transformation” with pledges totalling €771 million since 2014. An additional €96.5 million in new commitments were agreed upon during intergovernmental negotiations on 30 November 2021.

Added to the above is a loan guarantee scheme with a total value of €500 million launched by the German government in 2014.

Germany has also been supporting Ukraine’s military medical service. Since 2014, Germany’s military medical donations have been more than €13 million. And Germany is funding a deployable field hospital with a procurement cost of €5.3 million, plus a training component, with an estimated delivery date of February / March 2022.

Biolabs In Ukraine

In 2013, the German Federal Foreign Office launched the “German Partnership Program for Excellence in Biological and Health Security” for an initial period of three years. It was designed to mitigate biological security hazards and to establish and improve necessary biosecurity capacities all over the world. After being evaluated in 2016 and 2019, it was extended until 2022 under the banner of the German Biosecurity Program.

It’s important to reiterate here that bacteria, viruses, and biological toxins may be used for peaceful research purposes but research can be dual-use and also used for either militarised bioweapons or terrorist purposes by both state and non-state actors.

The German Biosafety Program works in various countries as part of the Global Partnership (“GP”).  The GP is made up of 30 active member countries and the EU.

Claiming to assist partner countries to minimise biological hazards and associated proliferation risks, the German Biosafety Program consists of several individual projects in Ukraine the implementation of which involves the following German institutions:

• Robert Koch Institute
• German Society for International Cooperation
• Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine
• Friedrich Loeffler Institute for Animal Health
• Institute for Microbiology of the German Armed Forces

In cooperation with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (“GIZ”), an association for international cooperation, the German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr) Institute of Microbiology is currently conducting the “Ukrainian-German biosafety initiative for zoonoses risk management near the EU external border” project within the German Biosecurity Program.

This same project is listed in the Global Partnership Working Group (“GPWG”) 2018 Annual Project Report.

Another German-Ukraine biosecurity project funded by the German government under the German Biosafety Partnership Program is titled ‘Strengthening biosecurity in dealing with proliferation-critical animal disease pathogens in Ukraine’.  It is a continuation of cooperation between three of the institutes of the Friedrich Loeffler Institute (“FLI”) and two Ukrainian institutes in Kyiv.

The FLI is an “independent higher federal authority within the portfolio of the [German] Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture” which is divided into twelve specialist institutes at five locations.

The Ukrainian institutes are responsible for veterinary diagnostics and handling of highly pathogenic biosecurity-relevant pathogens.

The aim of this second German-Ukraine project is “to strengthen the capacity in partner countries to diagnose bacterial infections such as anthrax, brucellosis, glanders, and viral infections such as African Swine Fever and Crimean-Congo Haemorrhagic Fever (“CCHF”) in animals.”

Regarding the CCHF portion of the project, the FLI has partnered with the Institute for Microbiology of the German Armed Forces.  A partnership that stretches across several related projects. Projects include the retrieval, handling and study of highly dangerous pathogens. This poses the same dilemma as with the US’s DTRA financing and partnering in highly sensitive bio-forensic projects in Ukraine. 

According to investigative journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, the FLI was also involved in biological research on particularly dangerous pathogens in birds in 2019 and 2020.  The main objective, according to the project description, was to sequence the genomes of orthomyxoviruses, which cause bird flu, and to discover new viruses in birds.

Gaytandzhieva also noted a DTRA funded project in 2020 the aim of which was to explore the potential of particularly dangerous pathogens that can be transmitted by migratory birds. The use of migratory birds to potentially transmit pathogens has been an important area of research conducted between the Smithsonian Institute and the US Department of Defence in the past.

Black & Veatch and Metabiota

Employees of the Ukrainian institute DNKIBSHM, which is one of those in a cooperation agreement with the FLI on the ‘Strengthening biosecurity in dealing with proliferation-critical animal disease pathogens in Ukraine’ project mentioned above, have participated in workshops and meetings organised by none other than Black & Veatch and Metabiota.  The two American companies that have recently been linked to biolabs in Ukraine.

21^st Century Wire has been able to identify at least four occasions where representatives of DNKIBSHM, at the invitation of Black & Veatch and Metabiota, participated in meetings, seminars or workshops:

1. In March/April 2019, two DNKIBSHM employees attended a meeting to launch the Joint Biological Research Project (“JDS”) of the UP-10 project.
2. In June 2019, the Deputy Director for Research of DNKIBSHM took part in the eleventh meeting of the Joint Working Group in Kyiv.
3. In October 2019, a DNKIBSHM employee participated in a seminar on writing grant applications.
4. In December 2019, two DNKIBSHM employees participated in the Workshop on the Results and Implementation of the CAP Model of the Joint Biological Research (“JAP”) UP-10 Project.

The above is extracted from the article ‘Germany’s Involvement in Military Biological Programs in Ukraine’, 21^st Century Wire, 15 April 2022.  21^st Century Wire’s research is extensive and we have only included a fraction of the first section. Their article continues to document relationships between:

• the Institute for Microbiology of the German Armed Forces and The Kharkiv National Medical University;
• the German Society for International Cooperation and the Ukrainian government;
• the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine and the Public Health Institute of Ukraine, the Ministry of Health in Kyiv, as well as regional laboratories in Kharkiv, Lviv, and Odessa; and,
• more …

21^st Century Wire’s article concludes by directing readers to the article ‘Russian envoy points to proof of Germany’s military biological activity in Ukraine’ which states:

“Documents confirm that Germany was implementing its own military biological program in Ukraine, Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Office and other International Organisations in Geneva, Gennady Gatilov said at a plenary meeting of the Conference on Disarmament.”

We shall look forward to the evidence that will support these Russian claims, and maybe then we can see if some of the concerns we have raised in this article are indeed justified, 21^st Century Wire wrote.  Read the full article HERE.

Update since 21^st Century Wire published their article

During an interview with RT published on Saturday, 16 April, Russian Director of the Foreign Ministry Information and Press Department Maria Zakharova stated that one of the reasons why Berlin “is more active than other EU countries” in trying to attribute plans to use biological and chemical weapons in Ukraine to Russia is that Germany had, in coordination with the United States, a network of at least 30 bio-military laboratories on Ukrainian territory working on “biological agents potentially useful as biological weapons.”

Germany, like the US, has for many years been carrying out “military and biological activities” on the territory of Ukraine, she stated.

Read more: Germany involved in ‘military biological activities’ in Ukraine – Russia, RT, 16 April 2022