MOSCOW, May 11. /TASS/. The Russian Defense Ministry has evidence the Pentagon had staged experiments on Ukrainian citizens at a psychiatric hospital near Kharkov, the chief of Russia’s radiation, chemical and biological protection force, Igor Kirillov, said on Wednesday.

"We have obtained fresh evidence disclosing the details of inhuman experiments the Pentagon had conducted on Ukrainian citizens at psychiatric hospital N. 1 (in the village of Strelechye, the Kharkov Region). The main group involved in the experiments consisted of male patients aged 40-60 suffering extreme physical exhaustion," Kirillov said.

The United Stated, he stressed, was trying to conceal the participation of its experts in biological experiments on the psychiatric hospital’s patients.

"For concealing the United States’ involvement [in the experiments at the psychiatric hospital near Kharkov] the experts who were conducting the experiments had arrived via third countries," Kirillov said. He demonstrated a photograph of a Florida-born specialist, Linda Oporto, who directly participated in such work.

"In January 2022, the foreign nationals who had been making the experiments were urgently evacuated and the equipment and drugs they had been using taken to the Western regions of Ukraine," Kirillov said.

Earlier, he said that potentially hazardous biological agents had been tested on patients at Kharkov’s regional clinical psychiatric hospital N. 3.