Maria Zakharova, the director of the information and press department of Russia’s foreign affairs ministry, on Saturday, told broadcaster RT that ”Germany closely coordinated its work on biological security with its US allies.”
She added that according to confirmed reports, the US established a network of at least 30 biological laboratories in Ukraine.
It comes after Western countries accused Russia of spreading wild conspiracy theories without any solid evidence.
A similar claim was made by Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations who said that America is using its weapons research in Ukraine to conduct biological warfare.
“Experiments were being conducted to study this spread of dangerous diseases using active parasites such as lice and fleas,” he said.
In response, British ambassador to the UN Barbara Woodward had said, “Let me put it diplomatically: they are utter nonsense. There is not a shred of credible evidence that Ukraine has a biological weapons programme.”
The United States had said that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government was spreading the unproven claim as a prelude to potentially launching its own biological or chemical assault.
“Russia has a track record of falsely accusing other countries of the very violations that Russia itself is perpetrating,” said the United States’ envoy to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
“This is work that has been done proudly, clearly, and out in the open. This work has everything to do with protecting the health of people. It has absolutely nothing to do with biological weapons,” she added.
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Previously, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had said, “The Americans carried out this work in complete secrecy. Just like how they work in other former Soviet states, creating their military-biological labs right along Russia’s borders.”
According to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, “The stuff which you are hearing about chemical weapons is straight out of the Russian playbook.”
“They start saying that there are chemical weapons that are being stored by their opponents or by the Americans, so that when they themselves deploy chemical weapons, as I fear they may, they have a fake story ready to go,” Johnson said.
“You have seen it in Syria, you saw it even in the UK. It is a cynical, barbaric government I’m afraid.”
(With inputs from agencies)
