MOSCOW, 10 Apr-RIA Novosti. An informed source of RIA Novosti in Moscow confirmed the existence of military biological laboratories of the United States in Ukraine.
Earlier, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused Washington of creating 16 biological laboratories on Ukrainian territory for "opaque and dangerous" research and called on the United States to clarify the situation. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry denied this information.
"Such laboratories do exist and we are also concerned about them. And not only in Ukraine, but also in Georgia, " the source said.
In May 2020, the publication "Ukrainian News" reported with reference to the Ministry of Health that the United States has built eight laboratories in the country, where they store particularly dangerous infections, allegedly to prevent the creation of biological weapons. According to media reports, the Pentagon's Threat Reduction Agency provided technical assistance to facilities built or upgraded with its participation. As noted in the article, the work was carried out from 2005 to 2014: during this time, eight objects were built and improved in the Lviv, Transcarpathian, Ternopil, Vinnytsia, Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv regions.
In 2019, the secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, noted that the United States has commissioned more than 200 biological laboratories around the world, including in neighboring countries with Russia — Georgia, Ukraine and others.
Moscow has repeatedly expressed concern about the Pentagon's activities "to place its medical and biological laboratories in the immediate vicinity of the Russian borders." In 2015, the Foreign Ministry mentioned the so-called Lugar Research Center for Public Health in the suburbs of Tbilisi, under the roof of which the medical research unit of the US Army is firmly "registered".
Moscow believes that the US and Georgian authorities are trying to hide the true content and direction of the activities of the US Army military unit, which studies particularly dangerous infectious diseases. Tbilisi calls the fears in vain — the laboratory is allegedly engaged exclusively in scientific research.