"The US is a biological terrorist state… it has set up many biological labs in tens of countries and regions, including Ukraine," KCNA said on Sunday, accusing Washington of speeding up the development of biochemical weapons that threaten the life and security of mankind.
KCNA said that the distribution of US biolabs around the world corresponds to where outbreaks of various diseases have been registered in the past years. These locations are mostly clustered around anti-American states, KCNA specified.
"It is by no means fortuitous that assertions are made that the US is behind the malignant [coronavirus] epidemic crisis confusing the international community," KCNA said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an article for the Izvestia newspaper last week that Washington is trying to justify itself by claiming that US biological activities in Ukraine were peaceful, but there is still no evidence of this. According to Lavrov, certain "findings" at military biolabs in Donbas point to direct violations of the Biological Weapons Convention.
On June 9, the US Defense Department said that the United States had helped provide support to 46 biological laboratories in Ukraine in order to improve biological security and monitor diseases.
In February, the Russian Defense Ministry discovered the existence of 30 US-funded military biological laboratories in Ukraine. According to Moscow, Washington has spent over $200 million to develop biological weapons at the facilities. Russia also said that the labs revealed in Ukraine constitute only a small part of a global network of over 300 similar facilities.