The Russian Ministry of Defense on Thursday (March 10th) accused the United States of having financed a biological weapons program in Ukraine, claiming to have found evidence to this effect in Ukrainian laboratories.
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"
The goal of this Pentagon-funded biological research in Ukraine was to create a mechanism for the stealthy spread of deadly pathogens
," ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in his morning briefing on the conflict in Ukraine.
According to him, Moscow has recovered “
documents submitted by employees of Ukrainian laboratories
”, referring to “
transfer of human bio-materials taken in Ukraine to foreign countries at the request of American representatives
”.
Igor Konashenkov also cited an “
American project on the transfer of pathogens by migratory wild birds between Ukraine and Russia and other neighboring countries
”.
Coronavirus, anthrax, swine fever
He assured that the United States plans to "
conduct work on pathogens of birds, bats and reptiles in Ukraine in 2022
" as well as on the "
possibility of the spread of African swine fever and anthrax
”.
"
In the established and funded laboratories in Ukraine, documents show that experiments were carried out with bat coronavirus samples
," the Russian spokesperson said.
Both the United States and Ukraine have denied the existence of laboratories intended to produce biological weapons in the country, which has been facing a Russian offensive led by tens of thousands of soldiers since February 24.
Russia had already accused the United States in 2018 of secretly carrying out biological experiments in a laboratory in Georgia, another former Soviet republic which, like Ukraine, aims to join NATO and the EU.
To justify its offensive, Moscow also considered that Ukraine had the ambition to acquire nuclear weapons, an idea that it nevertheless voluntarily abandoned in the 1990s.
