MOSCOW, September 22. /TASS/. Konstantin Kosachev, deputy speaker of the Federation Council, on Thursday said the Pentagon-run biolabs in Ukraine are pursuing military goals, proven by irrefutable evidence.

"Up until the last moment, until the start of Russia’s special military operation, it wasn’t fully clear how dangerous the activities of these laboratories were," Kosachev, who is also a co-chairman of the Parliamentary Commission on the Investigation of US Biological Laboratories in Ukraine, told reporters following a meeting of the commission.

"The public, specialists, and our parliamentary commission have gained a hold of incontrovertible evidence that this activity is of a military nature and drastically violates the commitments of the US and countries that cooperate with it under the 1972 Convention [on the Prohibition of Biological Weapons]," the lawmaker said.

Previously, Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov said that during the special military operation in Ukraine, Russian forces unearthed evidence pointing to an emergency cleanup by the Kiev regime of traces of a military biological program, carried out in Ukraine and bankrolled by the US Defense Department. According to Konashenkov, staff from these Pentagon-run Ukrainian-based labs revealed the emergency disposal of particularly dangerous pathogens on February 24, namely, the plague, anthrax, tularemia, cholera and other deadly diseases.

US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland on March 9, speaking at a hearing at the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US Senate, said that there were facilities in Ukraine that did research in the field of biology and that Washington was trying to prevent them from falling under the control of Russian forces. According to the diplomat, the State Department is "concerned that the Russian military may be trying to gain control of them," and is working with Ukraine to ensure that Kiev can "prevent any of these research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces".