Russia has revealed details behind the sponsorship of the secretive research
FILE PHOTO. A test tube pictured placed on hundred-dollar bills. © Getty Images / photovs
A sprawling network of Ukrainian biological laboratories has received funding from US government agencies and companies closely affiliated with top American elites, the Russian military claimed on Thursday.
The fresh allegations were presented by Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, commander of the Russian Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Forces, during a press briefing.
“The available materials make it possible to trace the scheme of interaction between US government agencies and Ukrainian biological objects,” Kirillov said, presenting an elaborate scheme purporting to show the flow of funding.
It was not immediately clear which company Kirillov was specifically referring to because Rosemont Seneca is a decentralized investment fund, comprised of several entities sharing similar names. President Joe Biden’s youngest son Hunter headed the now-defunct DC-based Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, but his legal team has denied his involvement with other branches of the fund, namely the Delaware-based Rosemont Seneca Thornton LLC.
The Rosemont Seneca fund is closely affiliated with top Pentagon contractors, Kirillov explained, explicitly naming Metabiota, as well as the Black and Veach companies he described as “the main supplier of equipment for Pentagon biolaboratories around the world.”
The latter concern has been named as a contractor in a 2015 deal between the US government and Ukraine, publicized by the Russian military during the briefing.
According to the document, a nearly $32-million program was aimed at “organizing work of the laboratories, built and modernized with the help of the donor [the US government],” as well as “monitoring infectious diseases” and conducting work to “react rapidly” to outbreaks. The program also listed the “safe collection, processing, temporary storage and transportation of clinical samples” as its goals.
The Ukrainian biolaboratories network has been funded by other US agencies as well, Kirillov said, describing the scale of the biolabs program as an “impressive” one.
“Apart from the military, the US Agency for International Development, the George Soros Foundation, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are directly involved in its implementation. Scientific supervision is carried out by leading research organizations, including the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which develops nuclear weapons,” the official said.
Moscow sound the alarm about questionable US-sponsored pharmaceutical and biological research taking place in secretive laboratories scattered across Ukraine after it attacked its neighbor, last month. The military offensive came following a seven-year standoff over Ukraine’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, and Russia’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics in Donetsk and Lugansk. The German- and French-brokered protocols had been designed to regularize the status of those regions within the Ukrainian state.
Russia has now demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.
