MOSCOW, May 5. /TASS/. The US Department of Energy has been recruiting experts who worked on weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine, Chief of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov said on Friday.

"Please pay attention to the official statement that Principal Deputy Director in the Office of Science at the US Department of Energy John Stephen Binkley made on April 4, 2022. <...> The document presented here confirms that the recruitment of specialists with experience and knowledge in the field of weapons of mass destruction was one of the Energy Department’s focuses," he pointed out at a briefing on the analysis of documents pertaining to Washington's military biological activities.

According to Kirillov, the document pointed out that the office would assist Ukraine in restoring the dual-purpose research programs that had been wrapped up earlier, after the possible return of the experts.

"Former staff member of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Professor Richard Weller was a key figure in the implementation of the US Department of Energy’s projects. He oversaw the implementation of Ukrainian projects aimed at studying diseases that can be transmitted from animals to humans at the Kiev Institute of Veterinary Medicine, and the Kharkov Institute of Experimental and Clinical Veterinary Medicine, Kirillov specified.