MOSCOW, September 25. /TASS/. Russia won’t let the Americans carry out biological experiments near its borders, Vladimir Yermakov, Director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Department, told reporters on Tuesday.
The diplomat commented on a statement by Georgia’s former state security minister, Igor Giorgadze, earlier this month that he had evidence that the United States conducted secret experiments on humans in a Georgian laboratory.
"We told [the Americans] that we won’t let your military biologists do something strange on the Russian border," Yermakov said.
According to Russia’s assessments, the US military agency is working on Georgian territory with biological materials and is using Georgian partners as "guinea pigs," the diplomat said.
Georgia’s ex-state security minister, Igor Giorgadze, told reporters at a news conference in Moscow on September 11 that he had evidence confirming that the Richard Lugar Public Health Research Center near Tbilisi carried out dangerous experiments and called on US President Donald Trump to investigate the laboratory’s activity. Giorgadze claimed that US military and private contractors could be engaged in secret experiments on humans there.
Meanwhile, US Defense Department spokesman Eric Pahon told TASS that Giorgadze’s statements were baseless.
Russia’s Defense Ministry later said it was studying information published on Giorgadze’s website. According to the ministry, the notorious facts and documents point to serious violations by Washington of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction, which the US ratified in 1972.
The Richard Lugar Public Health Research Center opened in Alekseyevka near Tbilisi’s international airport in 2011 under a US government program. The Center conducts research into biological threats.
