RIA Novosti published an article under the heading "The United States recruited Ukrainians with knowledge in the field of weapons of mass destruction." It says :
“The US Department of Energy was recruiting specialists in Ukraine with experience and knowledge in the field of weapons of mass destruction,” said Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, head of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defense Forces (RCBZ) of the Russian army.
“The presented document confirms that one of the activities of the Ministry of Energy is the recruitment of specialists who previously worked in Ukraine with experience and knowledge in the field of weapons of mass destruction,” he said at a briefing.
According to him, one of the ministry's 17 laboratories, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, located in Washington State, worked directly in Ukraine as part of a project called the Initiative to Prevent the Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
According to Kirillov, the Director of the Office of Scientific Research of the US Department of Energy, John Stephen Binkley, on April 4, 2022, said that the Office will assist the Ukrainian side in the restoration of curtailed dual-use research programs after the possible return of specialists.
The head of the RCHBZ troops named the ex-employee of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Professor Richard Weller, as the key person involved in the implementation of the projects of the US Department of Energy on the territory of Ukraine. According to Kirillov, Weller oversaw the implementation of Ukrainian projects to study diseases that can be transmitted from animal to human. These studies were carried out on the basis of the Kyiv Institute of Veterinary Medicine, as well as the Institute of Experimental and Clinical Veterinary Medicine in Kharkov.”
Among the 17 national laboratories of the US Department of Energy, there is indeed Pacific Northwest , which cooperates with Ukraine, including as part of a program to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Among the staff of the laboratory was Richard Weller, Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, who collaborated with Ukrainian research institutes. All this is easy to find in open sources, the information is not classified.
Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention is a non-proliferation program created in 1994. The website of the Bureau of Scientific and Technical Information of the US Department of Energy says about it:
“The mission of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Proliferation Prevention Initiative (IPP) program is to identify and create commercial opportunities for former weapons scientists currently or formerly involved in weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union. IPP was first authorized in fiscal year 1994 under Section 575 of Public Law 103-87. <…> Currently < as of 2001. — The Insider > IPP sponsors 164 projects in Russia at 64 institutes, 16 projects in Ukraine at 14 institutes, 14 projects in Kazakhstan at 10 institutes and one project in Belarus. To date, the IPP program has involved more than 10,000 specialists in the development of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and missiles from more than 170 institutes in Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus.”
That is, the goal of the program is to ensure that specialists who find themselves in difficult conditions after the collapse of the USSR do not use forces in third countries seeking to obtain weapons of mass destruction. The United States financed the involvement of post-Soviet specialists in the destruction of stockpiles of weapons in accordance with international treaties.
A 2007 audit report on the program is available online, showing that the ministry has substantially overestimated its achievements under the program. It also says that the program in Russia and Ukraine has lost its relevance, since the economies of these countries have become quite strong and there is no longer any danger of involving scientists from them in programs to create weapons of mass destruction in third countries.
Information about the program has not been updated on the website of the Ministry of Energy for a long time, and on the website of the Canadian international program for the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction Assistance Support Initiative it is indicated that the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention program has been completed.
The Pacific Northwest laboratory cooperates with Ukraine in the framework of other programs, in particular, to improve energy security and energy efficiency. The program has nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction and specialists in this area.
Dr. Richard Weller, according to the website of the laboratory, in 2008 received the title of honorary professor of the Kiev Institute of Veterinary Medicine, where he gave a lecture on the history of veterinary oncology. He also collaborated with the Ukrainian Academy of Agrarian Sciences and with its Institute of Clinical and Experimental Medicine in Kharkov. He was involved in the development of biosecurity and biosafety methods in animal disease research. The last of his works related to Ukraine – "The incidence of tuberculosis in cattle in areas with low radiation pollution in Ukraine" – was published in 2009. Weller's later studies no longer concern Ukraine, but Georgia and Armenia, where he studied the spread of African swine fever. Apparently, Weller has nothing to do with the development of weapons of mass destruction.
