The Trump administration on 7 January ordered the US withdrawal from 66 international organizations, including the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine (STCU).
The STCU is an intergovernmental body that has spent three decades preventing weapons of mass destruction experts from selling their knowledge to hostile regimes and terrorist networks.
The withdrawal targets one of the most successful post-Cold War non-proliferation programs — a center designed to prevent the nightmare scenario that haunted Western security planners after 1991: unemployed Soviet weapons scientists selling their expertise to Iran, North Korea, or terrorist networks.
As recently as September 2025, the center held its 61st Governing Board meeting in Chisinau, Moldova — continuing operations even as Washington prepared to walk away.
Why the STCU was created
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Western governments faced a terrifying prospect: thousands of unemployed scientists with intimate knowledge of how to build weapons of mass destruction.
The collapse led to mass unemployment among these scientists and engineers. Many had not received payments for months. The West believed that the dissemination of expert knowledge — or the employment of these researchers by unfriendly nations or terror networks — would lead to the proliferation of nuclear, biological and chemical weaponry.
The STCU was established in 1993 through an international multilateral treaty. Its mission: help scientists involved in the research, development and production of nuclear, biological and chemical assets in former Soviet states transition from military to civilian careers.
The model was straightforward: pay weapons scientists to work on peaceful projects so they wouldn't sell their expertise to Iran, North Korea, or terrorist organizations.
The center is headquartered in Kyiv with regional offices in Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, and Lviv. It operates branch offices in Baku (Azerbaijan), Tbilisi (Georgia), Chisinau (Moldova), and Tashkent (Uzbekistan) — covering former Soviet republics where WMD knowledge remained after independence.
What the STCU program accomplished
With a 30-year legacy, the STCU has allocated over $470 million to nearly 2,400 R&D projects spanning energy, agriculture, medicine, material science, aerospace, physics, and biological safety.
At its 61st Governing Board meeting in September 2025 — held in Chisinau, Moldova, with US representatives participating — the center approved $16.2 million in funding for 2025 alone.
That September meeting included approval for the IMPRESS-U initiative. The program was led by the US National Science Foundation and funded by the US National Academy of Sciences and the US Office of Naval Research "to advance US interests by supporting excellence in science and engineering research, education, and innovation."
Four months later, Washington announced it was walking away.
Trump administration's pattern of withdrawal from international organizations
The STCU is one of 66 organizations the Trump administration designated as no longer serving American interests.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the withdrawals fulfill a key commitment of Trump's presidency: "Today, President Trump announced the US is leaving 66 anti-American, useless, or wasteful international organizations."
The list includes:
- UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
- UN Democracy Fund
- European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats
- Science and Technology Center in Ukraine
The State Department stated these institutions were found to be "redundant in their scope, mismanaged, unnecessary, wasteful, poorly run, captured by the interests of actors advancing their own agendas contrary to our own, or a threat to our nation's sovereignty."
Russia's disinformation narrative gains traction
The withdrawal comes after years of Russian disinformation targeting the STCU.
In 2022, Russia's Defense Ministry accused the center of distributing grants for Pentagon biological weapons research. These claims were amplified by China but rejected by Western governments and the STCU itself.
The STCU Governing Board discussed and "unanimously condemned Russia's continued campaign of disinformation, falsehoods, and outright lies against Ukraine, the STCU, and its partners, which are an unsuccessful attempt by the Kremlin to create a false pretext for its horrendous actions."
Now, as the Trump administration cuts funding to the very organization Russia falsely accused of weapons development, the non-proliferation mission faces an uncertain future during an active war.
What happens to the scientists now?
The European Union remains a funding partner, but US withdrawal removes one of the two major donors.
The original concern that drove the STCU's creation — that unpaid scientists might sell their expertise to hostile actors — has not disappeared. If anything, Russia's war has created new displacement and uncertainty for Ukrainian researchers.
The EU and United States had been working with the STCU and the international scientific community to identify and support opportunities for Ukrainian scientists displaced by Russia's illegal military aggression.
That cooperation now ends from the American side.
The Trump administration's review of additional international organizations remains ongoing, according to the White House.
