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To justify its invasion of Ukraine, Moscow accuses Kiev of producing biological weapons with the help of the United States. Fanciful accusations for Westerners, who fear instead that they serve as a pretext for a chemical attack by the Kremlin. However, the biological risk does exist. If only because of the pathogens used by Ukrainian research laboratories. As a precaution, the WHO recommends that Kiev destroy them to avoid any risk of contamination.
With our correspondent in Geneva, Jeremiah Lance
The World Health Organization (WHO) does not say which pathogens are used by Ukrainian laboratories, or even their level of safety of these laboratories. But we know that like all countries, Ukraine conducts research on infectious agents in order to limit their spread.
« There are laboratories which are research laboratories, which have pathogens which can be extremely dangerous, so it may be Ebola viruses, highly resistant bacilli, because we may need them to be able to develop tests or vaccines “explains the director of the Geneva Institute of Global Health, Antoine Flahaut.
Accusations of making biological weapons
The WHO’s recommendation to destroy pathogens to prevent a possible escape may seem worrying from this point of view. For the epidemiologist, it should rather be seen as a measure of common sense. Especially in the current epidemic context: “ One of the hypotheses of the start of the coronavirus pandemic is precisely an unfortunate leak from the laboratory. One can therefore imagine that the soldiers, the military coming to the rubble with viruses that would have escaped from a destroyed freezer, might indeed be an object of risk. »
As for Russian accusations that these pathogens are used to manufacture biological weapons, the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky brushed them aside, ironically asking the Kremlin if, following claiming to want to denazify Ukraine, Russia now intended to tear the country apart.
►Read: Ukraine: the West denounces the Russian disinformation attempt at the UN on biological weapons
