MOSCOW, March 7. /TASS/. A network of more than 30 biological laboratories was formed on the Ukrainian territory at the request of the US Department of Defense’s Threat Reduction Agency, the chief of Russia’s radiation, chemical and biological protection force, Igor Kirillov, said on Monday.
"The Russian Defense Ministry has repeatedly drawn attention to the military-biological programs the Pentagon is implementing in the post-Soviet space. In Ukraine, a network of more than 30 biological laboratories was created. Some of them are research laboratories and others, sanitary-epidemiological ones," he said.
Taking part in the projects is the Black and Veatch company, affiliated with the Department of Defense.
Research proceeds along three main tracks.
"Firstly, the biological situation is monitored in areas where, the Pentagon says, the deployment of NATO’s military contingents is likely. Secondly, there is the collection and transportation to the United States of samples of highly pathogenic microorganisms. And thirdly, research into likely agents of biological weapons, specific for the given region, which have natural froci and can be transmitted to humans," Kirillov said.
He said that since 2021 the Pentagon had been working on a $11.8-million project for the diagnosis, surveillance and prevention of zoonotic diseases in the Ukrainian army.
"In 2020-2021 the German Defense Ministry conducted research in Ukraine into the pathogens of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, leptospirosis, meningitis and hantaviruses under a Ukrainian-German initiative for biological safety on the European Union’s perimeter borders," Kirillov stressed.