Moscow, SAEDNEWS: A diagram published by the Russian Defense Ministry on Thursday demonstrates American attempts to work on an “especially dangerous pathogen of anthrax.”
Titled “Coordination of Biological Laboratories and Scientific Research Centers of Ukraine and the US,” the diagram also features George Soros and a tab representing the Democratic Party as the masterminds behind the attempts.
The Russian Defense Ministry said the information had been found in documents seized by their soldiers in Ukraine.
It also said that the US Agency for International Development (AID) was involved in the scheme, in addition to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“The scale of the program is impressive,” said Igor Kirillov, head of the radiation, chemical, and biological defense department of the Russian Armed Forces.
“The incoming materials allow us to trace the pattern of interaction between the US government agencies and Ukrainian bio-objects,” a signed statement from the Russian Defense Ministry said, on the basis of the seized documents.
The involvement of entities close to the current US leadership, notably the Rosemont Seneca investment fund run by Hunter Biden, is also noticeable in the funding of these activities.
According to Moscow, the Rosemont Fund is closely linked to key contractors of the US military department, including Metabiota, which is a major supplier of equipment to the Pentagon’s bio-labs around the world and specializes in research on pandemic-causing diseases that could be used as bio-weapons.
The US president’s son and his colleagues invested $500,000 in Metabiota through their firm Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners. They raised several million dollars of funding for the company from investment giants including Goldman Sachs.
According to Russian officials, the Ukrainians had 30 laboratories, located in 14 settlements, some of which they have captured during the military operation.
Britain's Daily Mail said emails and defense contract data reviewed by the newspaper confirm that Hunter had a prominent role in making sure Metabiota was able to conduct its pathogen research just a few hundred miles from the border with Russia.
The project turned into a national security liability for Ukraine when Russian forces started their military operation in the country last month.
Metabiota has worked in Ukraine for Black & Veatch, a US defense contractor with deep ties to military intelligence agencies, which built secure labs in Ukraine that analyzed killer diseases and bioweapons.
Earlier this month, US officials warned Congress that “Russian forces may be seeking to gain control” of these “biological research facilities,” prompting fears that deadly and even engineered pathogens could fall into Russian hands.
Emails revealed from Hunter’s abandoned laptop show he helped secure millions of dollars of funding for Metabiota.
In April 2014, Metabiota vice president Mary Guttieri wrote a memo to Hunter outlining how they could “assert Ukraine’s cultural and economic independence from Russia.”
“Thanks so much for taking time out of your intense schedule to meet with Kathy [Dimeo, Metabiota executive] and I on Tuesday. We very much enjoyed our discussion,” Guttieri wrote.
Four days after Guttieri's April 2014 email, Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi wrote to Hunter revealing that the then-US vice president’s son had pitched a “science project” involving Burisma and Metabiota in Ukraine.
“Please find few initial points to be discussed for the purposes of analyzing the potential of this as you called, ‘Science Ukraine’ project,” Pozharskyi wrote.
Former senior CIA officer Sam Faddis, who has reviewed emails on Hunter’s laptop, told the Daily Mail that the offer to help assert Ukraine’s independence was odd for a biotech executive.
“It raises the question, what is the real purpose of this venture? It’s very odd,” he said.
China has also offered its take on the issue. In a tweet on March 8, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian wrote: “The US has 336 labs in 30 countries under its control, including 26 in Ukraine alone. It should give a full account of its biological military activities at home and abroad and subject itself to multilateral verification.”
In recent weeks, Russia has demanded transparency from the United States over the military biological programs implemented in Ukraine, saying Washington needs to inform the world why it had supported the project.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a news briefing on March 9 that Russia had evidence showing US-funded bio-labs in Ukraine had urgently destroyed samples of deadly pathogens, including anthrax, cholera, and the plague, following Moscow’s military operation in the neighboring country on February 24.
“We can already conclude that in Ukrainian biological laboratories in direct proximity to the territory of our country, development of components of biological weapons was being carried out,” Zakharova said.
On February 24, Russia launched an offensive against Ukraine in what Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a “special military operation.”
The US and its allies, for their part, have imposed a long list of sanctions on Moscow.
The military conflict has so far displaced more than two and a half million people in what the United Nations has described as the fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II (Source: PRESSTV).
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