I heard it was since 2005, but 17 years seems like enough time to kill the bugs and clean up, you know.
“17 years seems like enough time to kill the bugs and clean up”
Well, it seems the “non-proliferation” work wasn’t even focused on destroying their stockpiles of pathogens. It was just upgrading their facilities to modern biosafety protocols and doing assessments of their security protocols. We seem to have been only worried about terrorists slipping in and stealing from the facilities, not about the Ukrainian government having access to the pathogens.
In at least one case, the Ukrainians didn’t even give us access to one facility where the most top secret Soviet-era work was done. They were happy to take our money though.