SOCHI, June 24. /TASS/. Russia cannot turn a blind eye to the threats posed by US biological activity, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on the sidelines of an international scientific conference on global biosecurity challenges.
"We cannot ignore biological risks over the non-transparent US biological activity, especially close to Russia’s borders, that is in many cases threatening our interests," Ryabkov said.
The senior diplomat noted that the Ninth Review Conference of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction (BWC) will be held in 2022.
"Russia is one of three countries-depositaries of the Convention. The two others are the United States and the United Kingdom. I would like to hope that, despite the political differences and contradictions, which are not few between us with Washington and London, in this area it will still be possible to increase the impetus for cooperation, overcoming contradictions and solving existing problems," he went on to say.
According to the high-ranking diplomat, Russia would like to repeat the successful experience of 2017, when at the initiative of Anna Popova, who heads the Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing, the countries-depositaries adopted a joint statement.
"Now we will be working on a document like this and expect that it will still become a unifying start. We should not face the wall of misunderstanding, the wall of mistrust, we should focus on solving a number of problems," the deputy foreign minister said.