The Pentagon's interest in former Soviet bio laboratories in post-Soviet republics, particularly in Kazakhstan, requires clarification, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Wednesday during a speech at MGIMO.
"We are now finalizing with our Kazakh friends a memorandum on cooperation in biology <...> The fact that the Pentagon was interested in these issues, former Soviet laboratories, to modernize them, to create some new facilities, it is very interesting and requires clarification. I hope that we and Kazakhstan will definitely resolve these issues," he said.
The minister added that Russia is mostly concerned about the military and biological activities of the United States in the former Soviet Union, although American bio laboratories are located all over the world. As for the joint memorandum with Kazakhstan, Lavrov stressed that such a procedure was carried out with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and is being completed with Armenia. He also expressed hope for such a process in the CSTO.
"[Cooperation in this sphere is necessary,] so that everything is transparent for us and for each other, and within the CSTO everything is transparent, and I hope that we will complete it, as we have done with our Tajik colleagues, our Uzbek colleagues, and we are completing it with our Armenian colleagues," he said.
Earlier, the Russian defense ministry gave a presentation saying that the US had spent over $200 million on funding biological laboratories in Ukraine, which participated in the US military biological program and dealt, in particular, with pathogens of plague and anthrax. A network of more than 30 biological laboratories that worked for the Pentagon was formed in Ukraine, the Russian military department said.
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Photo: Russian Foreign Ministry
Based on materials from TASS