United States accused of abusing its power to outsource weapons research.
QUICK FACTS:
- Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is accusing the United States of using its position of influence to house bio-labs in post-soviet states.
- The newly independent nations were “weak and inexperienced” and the United States used its power to push a network of bio-labs that Russia believes are conducting military research, according to a report by Russian-based RT.
- The Russian leader told RT Arabic that Washington took advantage of the collapse of the USSR, investing in poor nations that had need of basic necessities, exploring them, according to Lavrov.
WHAT THE RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTER SAID:
- “Our Western partners then, so to speak, vigorously scrambled. They offered their services in every aspect and infiltrated every area of the newly-independent states. They sent advisers. And now we are experiencing what came as a result of those times,” the Russian Foreign Minister said.
- The foreign official was focusing particularly on the US-Funded labs allegedly operating under the umbrella of the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency to conduct biological research.
- The experiments they conduct in those labs. We have long suspected that they are not peaceful and harmless,” Lavrov said.“The samples of pathogens that were stored [at Ukrainian labs], the paperwork showed clearly the military character of the experiments. And the documents made it clear that there are dozens of these labs in Ukraine,” he added.
BACKGROUND:
- Washington does admit that it has a network of benign labs that work to detect and identify emerging pathogens.
- However, some nations, including Russia, believe that their use is more nefarious, including undercover bioweapons research.
