MOSCOW, June 29. /TASS/. US biological laboratories’ activities in Ukraine in 2016 resulted in mass deaths across the country caused by swine flu, and a year later several Ukrainian cities were affected by hepatitis A outbreaks, Viktor Medvedchuk, leader of the Other Ukraine movement and former head of Ukraine’s banned Opposition Platform - For Life party, said on Monday.

Medvedchuk noted that after the ruling power in the country was changed following the 2014 state coup with [former] President Pyotr Poroshenko (designated in Russia as an extremist and terrorist), "the Ukrainian note on the termination of the deal [with the Pentagon] was withdrawn and the issue of biolabs was taken off the agenda."

"A new multi-year contract was signed in 2015. All projects were implemented under an agreement with the Pentagon (UP-2, UP-4, P-781, UP-6, UP-8, etc.), and the negative consequences continued in January 2016: at least 20 military servicemen died in the Kharkov [Region] from a flu-like virus, while more than 200 were hospitalized. Two months later, the death toll across the country reached 364, caused by swine flu A (H1N1 strain) pdm09, the same strain that had already led to the 2009 pandemic," he continued.

Medvedchuk pointed out that already in 2017, outbreaks of hepatitis A spread across the territories of the Nikolayev, Zaporozhye, Odessa and Kharkov Regions.

On June 19, Major General Alexey Rtishchev, chief of the Russian Armed Forces' Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Defense Troops, reported that US intelligence materials confirmed that biological laboratories on Ukrainian territory were funded from the US federal budget. These laboratories studied pathogens such as plague, anthrax, tularemia, Marburg fever, and Ebola, all of which can be transmitted to humans and cause severe, pandemic-level diseases.

Earlier, US National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard acknowledged that research involving "dangerous pathogens" in US biolaboratories in other countries poses a potential threat of global catastrophe. Declassified documents state that the US helped establish over 40 biolaboratories in Ukraine linked to the American military-industrial complex.

In June 2022, the Pentagon reported that the US had supported 46 biological laboratories in Ukraine. According to Washington, this cooperation was for peaceful purposes. Meanwhile, Russian authorities have repeatedly expressed concern about the activities of US biolaboratories in Ukraine. Now, the US National Intelligence Directorate has effectively acknowledged the validity of these concerns. Gabbard confirmed that the research conducted at these facilities could have a catastrophic global impact.