Ukraine hosts a network of closed laboratories modernized under a U. S. Defense Department program, military expert Igor Nikulin, a former member of the UN commission on biological and chemical weapons, told TASS.
Nikulin said the facilities had been upgraded through the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency, or DTRA. He noted that Donbass was located close to the area that could have fallen within their potential zone of influence.
The expert also referred to documents obtained by Russian troops at several biological laboratories in liberated territories. According to those materials, local specialists collected, studied and artificially enhanced tuberculosis pathogens with high resistance to antibiotics.
Earlier, Vladimir Tarabrin, Russia’s permanent representative to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and Russian ambassador to the Netherlands, said Russian forces had found laboratories at abandoned Ukrainian Armed Forces positions where toxic chemicals were being produced in semi-artisanal conditions. He also said Ukraine was continuing to develop a covert military-chemical program with the involvement of foreign states.