Ukrainians worked on creating WMD use, means of delivery - Russian Defense

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On Thursday, the head of the radiation, chemical, and biological defense of the Russian Armed Forces, Igor Kirillov, said that documents show Ukrainian specialists have been working on creating delivery vehicles for weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Kirillov noted that the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine (STCU) had given grants for research that would benefit the Pentagon, including the field of biological weapons. Its sponsors from the United States are the Defense Department and the State Department, and it was funded by the US Environmental Protection Agency and US departments of agriculture, health and energy. Kirillov cited a document that the STCU curators prepared on March 11, 2022.

"Using such formulations, Washington actually recognizes the work by Ukrainian experts on the creation of means for the delivery and use of weapons of mass destruction and considers it appropriate to continue their financing," he said.

The document shows an outflow of experts in the development of biological, radiological, chemical, and nuclear weapons and scientific experts in the development of delivery vehicles and modern weapons who worked at Ukrainian institutions. The most trained and experienced with dual-use materials and technologies (between 1,000 and 4,000 people) found themselves in unfavorable professional and financial circumstances, which makes them exposed to defection to the side of other states to take part in programs to develop WMD, delivery vehicles, and other weapons.

"During a special operation on the territory of Ukraine, it was established that in the period from 2019 to 2021, US scientists from a laboratory in the city of Merefa (Kharkiv region) tested potentially dangerous biological drugs on patients of the regional clinical psychiatric hospital No. 3 in the city of Kharkiv," he said.

The general added that individuals with mental disorders had been chosen for experiments based on their age, immune status, and nationality, and the outcome of round-the-clock monitoring of the patients' condition was taken into consideration on special forms.

Kirillov stressed that "no information was entered into the database of the hospital, the staff of the medical institution signed a non-disclosure agreement."

"In January 2022, the activities of the laboratory in Merefa were stopped, all equipment and preparations were taken to western Ukraine. There are testimonies of a number of witnesses to these inhuman experiments, whose names we cannot disclose in the interests of ensuring their safety," he added.

According to new documents, the US curators of the STCU considered it vital for the US government to allot $31 million for a 3-year employment program for WMD specialists who left Ukraine.

Moscow requests UN Security Council meeting on biological weapons

Moscow has requested that the UN Security Council hold an emergency meeting on March 11 to discuss the suspected manufacturing of biological weapons in Ukraine.

Earlier last month, Igor Kirillov, the head of the radiation, chemical, and biological defense of the Russian armed forces, reported that Russian forces found 30 biological laboratories in Ukraine, possibly used to develop biological weapons.

Kirillov revealed that the US Pentagon-funded bio-laboratories in Ukraine developed, among other things, projects for the spread of biological weapons to Russia via bats.

Russian Defense Ministry Spokesperson Major General Igor Konashenkov had revealed that Kiev was urgently covering up traces of a military biological program carried out in Ukraine and funded by the Pentagon.

The Russian diplomat confirmed that the US has "already managed to evacuate most of the documentation" from the laboratories in Kiev, Kharkov, and Odessa.

Both the US and Ukraine have denied such accusations. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that "No one is developing any chemical or any other weapons of mass destruction."

Western states are accusing Russia of potentially using chemical weapons itself- something they claim Russia did in Syria and which was never proven.

Due to a lack of evidence from Syria, the unresolved case of chemical weapons in Syria remains a topic of contention for the Security Council.

In 2018, Russia believed the US was conducting further experiments on biological weapons in Georgia.