New Evidence Points to Military-Focused Biolab Research in Ukraine - Russian MoD
09:59 GMT 19.06.2026 (Updated: 10:29 GMT 19.06.2026)
© Sputnik / Denis Aslanov
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Documents obtained during the special military operation provide further evidence that US-backed biological laboratories in Ukraine were engaged in research beyond the country's public health needs, Chief of Russia's Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Troops Lieutenant General Alexey Rtishchev said.
"Our repeated statements about the formation by the US Democratic Party of a legislative framework for financing military biological research were confirmed in a published press release by the Head of National Intelligence," Rtishchev said.
Russia will "consider the published documents to be further evidence of the Kiev regime's violation of its obligations under the Convention [on the Prohibition of Biological and Toxin Weapons] and will seek clarification of the situation on relevant international platforms," he added.
"The very nomenclature of pathogens, which does not correspond to the current health problems of Ukraine, where an increase in the incidence of rubella, diphtheria, and tuberculosis is recorded, indicates attempts to develop biological weapons components in Ukrainian biolabs," Rtishchev said.
Other statements:
The documents confirm research into the damaging properties of potential biological weapons agents, as well as pathogens capable of undermining a state's economy
A 2005 US-Ukraine agreement provided the legal framework for the program, while the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) coordinated the work under strict secrecy
The pathogen inventory at the US-reconstructed Mechnikov Institute in Kharkov, including large stocks of cholera, tularemia and brucellosis agents, points to work on biological weapons components
Additionally, the Institute of experimental and clinical veterinary medicine (IECVM) in Kharkov studied serious diseases that can damage agriculture, he said.
UP projects were omitted from the recent US intelligence release and that the published documents confirm Ukraine violated the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention.
"I would like to remind you about the Ukrainian projects with a clear military-biological orientation, codenamed UP, which were not included in the specified press release," Rtishchev said.
The UP-1 project was aimed at studying rickettsia and other diseases spread by arthropods. The mechanisms of cross-border spread and migration of tularemia and anthrax vectors were evaluated within the framework of the large-scale UP-2 project, the official explained.
"We have information about ten similar projects that involved working with pathogens of particularly dangerous and economically significant infections - Congo-Crimean fever, leptospirosis, tick-borne encephalitis, and African swine fever," Rtishchev said.
