GENEVA, August 17. /TASS/. Moscow will continue to demand Washington provide comprehensive information about its bio-military activities around the world, including those near Russia's borders, Konstantin Vorontsov, the deputy director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Nonproliferation and Arms Control Department has told a news briefing. Vorontsov leads Russia’s delegation at a session of the Working Group on the Strengthening of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) being held in Geneva on August 7-18.
Vorontsov recalled that for a long time Russia expressed concern "about military-biological activities being conducted with the most direct involvement of the US Department of Defense in laboratories outside US territory, far from the North American continent around the world, including areas close to Russia's borders."
"Our repeated calls on the US side to provide exhaustive explanations of such activities have remained without a proper substantive response to this day," Vorontsov said. The US reports that are provided annually as part of the BTWC confidence-building measures (last time it was done in March 2023), lack "detailed information on Washington’s programs and projects afoot outside the national territory."
"Such secrecy only confirms the questions to the United States are well-founded," he stressed.
Vorontsov said that the facts exposed in Ukraine were a graphic example of the US military-biological activities. Russia, he said, "has received evidence that testifies to activities at biolaboratories in Ukraine related to the creation of biological weapons components. This completely contradicts the BTWC," the diplomat emphasized.
He said that Russia had "in a thorough and detailed manner" presented its concerns in this regard at the Consultative Meeting of the States Parties to the BTWC, organized at its initiative last September, and also initiated "a discussion of this topic on the platform of the UN Security Council."
In the meantime, the United States and its allies "are trying to act in the most destructive way possible, they do not present any counterarguments, and instead they reduce everything to just making unsubstantiated statements about some kind of disinformation" on the part of Russia, Vorontsov stressed. Russia is confident that "the truth will make its way out despite all the artificial obstacles put up by the Western countries," he pointed out. "We will continue to press for detailed and substantive answers to the reasonable questions we have posed.".