At the UN, Russia Declared the Odesa Lab a Biological Weapons Store: the Documents Are American, the Conclusion Is Russian

Moscow has reopened the old story of "American biolabs" in Ukraine, this time from the podium of the United Nations. Konstantin Vorontsov, deputy director of the Department for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control at the Russian Foreign Ministry, pointed to a specific address before the First Committee of the 81st session of the General Assembly: the Central Reference Laboratory of the Ukrainian "I. I. Mechnikov" Anti-Plague Research Institute in Odesa.

"I would especially like to draw attention to the Central Reference Laboratory in Odesa, which is explicitly designated as a site for storing biological weapons," Vorontsov said. His trump card isn't Russian, but American documents - those published by former US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on 11 May and 12 June 2026, as part of the investigation into years of American funding for biological laboratories abroad.

On 12 June, Gabbard announced that for years the US had funded more than 120 biological laboratories in over 30 countries, including Ukraine, where, according to the documents, there are more than 40 such facilities. According to her, some of the laboratories carried out potentially dangerous research on pathogens and viruses, including experiments that can enhance certain properties of microorganisms. She also warned that the laboratories in Ukraine, because of the war, could pose an additional security risk if dangerous pathogens escape controlled conditions.

And here comes the small print. The American documents do contain wording about storing pathogens linked to former Soviet biological weapons programmes. But the fact that dangerous microorganisms are kept in a laboratory does not prove that biological weapons intended for use are produced or stored there. What else would an anti-plague institute keep if not dangerous pathogens?

Vorontsov also cited the agreement Washington and Kyiv signed on 29 August 2005 on cooperation in preventing the spread of technologies, pathogens and expertise that could be used to develop biological weapons. According to the official text, the aim is to prevent the spread of dangerous pathogens and improve laboratory safety - Moscow has claimed for years that something else lies behind it. The Ukrainian Health Ministry rejected the accusations and said the American aid was intended for laboratory diagnostics, epidemiological surveillance and preventing the spread of infectious diseases.

Vorontsov opened a second front too - chemical weapons. According to him, Russia has sent around 40 diplomatic notes to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) about the alleged use of banned chemical agents by Ukrainian forces. "All of them have gone unanswered both by the Kyiv regime and by its accomplices," he said. The OPCW said earlier that both Russia and Ukraine had submitted mutual accusations, and its experts confirmed the presence of the substance CS, known as tear gas, in some samples collected on the Ukrainian battlefield. Those findings, however, do not by themselves establish who used it.

The world has already watched someone at the UN wave "evidence" of weapons of mass destruction. In 2003, US Secretary of State Colin Powell held up a vial in the Security Council, Iraq was then invaded, and the weapons were never found. The roles are reversed today; the pattern isn't. How many times have the Balkans heard "the documents show" before anyone actually showed a document?