YEREVAN, June 11. /TASS/. Moscow hopes to complete negotiations on biological labs with Yerevan as soon as possible and finalize a memorandum on the issue, which guarantees non-presence of foreign military personnel in these laboratories, Russian Ambassador to Armenia Sergey Kopyrkin said at an online briefing on Thursday.

"Work to agree on the biological lab issue is at the stage of inter-agency coordination. However, all that has been suspended because of the pandemic. As for Russia, of course, we look forward to the soonest completion of negotiations and the coordination of that memorandum with our Armenian partners. We are confident that the signing of this memorandum will have a favorable impact on the sanitary and epidemiological wellbeing of Russia, Armenia and the entire post-Soviet space," he noted.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said earlier that the Russian-Armenian memorandum on biological labs would result in stronger cooperation in ensuring biological safety between the two countries.