NEW YORK, March 23. /TASS/. The United States was developing military biological projects in labs operating on the territory of countries that border Russia, and Moscow has solid evidence to prove that, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

"Unfortunately, we have a very strong reason to believe and there is strong evidence that the United States has been developing biolabs programs on the territory of various countries around the Russian Federation, including the territory of Ukraine," he told CNN in an interview aired on Tuesday. "This is quite a sophisiticated and quite a dangerous biolab program that was led top secret by American specialists."

"This is the reality that we are facing," he said, adding that no chemical or biological weapons remained in Russia since 2017, as it its entire stockpile was completely eliminated in accordance with international agreements.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov earlier said the special military operation in Ukraine produced evidence the Kiev regime was urgently eliminating traces of a US Department of Defense-funded military biological program in Ukraine. He said that according to staffers of Ukrainian biolaboratories a number of extremely dangerous pathogens, such as those causing plague, anthrax, tularemia, cholera and other lethal diseases were urgently destroyed on February 24.

US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, while testifying before the US Senate’s foreign relations committee on March 9, acknowledged that some facilities conducting clandestine biological research were operating in Ukraine, and that Washington was keen to prevent Russian forces from gaining control of these facilities. She said the US Department of State was "quite concerned that Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to gain control of [those labs], so we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces." The Russian Defense Ministry said that in fact it was a confirmation of the Pentagon’s involvement in military biological programs in Ukraine.

In the meantime, US Department of State spokesperson Ned Price denied that the US controlled chemical or biological laboratories in Ukraine.