Foreign Desk Report
BEIJING: China asked Washington on Tuesday to release “relevant details as soon as possible” regarding alleged US biological laboratories in Ukraine.
“According to the data released by the US itself, the US has 26 biological laboratories and other related facilities in Ukraine which has indeed attracted great attention,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a news conference in Beijing. A similar claim was made Sunday by Russian Defence Ministry that there was “evidence of a US-financed military biological programme developed in Ukraine.” Moscow said the lab was “revealed during Russia’s special operation in that country.”
“All dangerous viruses in Ukraine must be stored in these laboratories. All research activities are led by the US.
No information is allowed to be disclosed without the permission of the US side,” claimed Zhao, according to a transcription of the news conference.
He claimed the Pentagon “has absolute control” over these alleged labs. Russia’s war on Ukraine has drawn international condemnation, led to financial sanctions on Moscow, and spurred an exodus of global firms from Russia.
The West has also imposed biting export restrictions on key technologies that are now prohibited from being sent to Russia.
At least 406 civilians have been killed and 801 injured in Ukraine since the beginning of the war, according to UN figures.
But the international body has maintained that conditions on the ground have made it “difficult to verify” the true number of casualties.
As many as two million people have fled to neighbouring countries, according to the UN Refugee Agency.
“Under the current situation, we call on all parties concerned to ensure the safety of these laboratories, starting from the health and safety of people in Ukraine and surrounding areas and around the world,” said Zhao.
“In particular, the US, as the party that knows these laboratories best, should announce the relevant details as soon as possible, including which viruses have been stored and which research has been carried out,” he said. “The revelation of the US bio-military activity in Ukraine is just the tip of the iceberg.”
“The US Department of Defence controls 336 biological laboratories in 30 countries around the world under the names of ‘cooperating to reduce biosecurity risks and strengthening global public health,’” Zhao added.
Russia’s Defence Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said the forces had thwarted a large-scale attack plot in the east, citing in a televised statement what he claimed was an intercepted Ukrainian National Guard document.
The special military operation of the Russian armed forces, carried out since February 24, pre-empted and thwarted a large-scale offensive by strike groups of Ukrainian troops on the Luhansk and Donetsk Peoples Republics, which are not controlled by Kyiv, in March of this year, Konashenkov said.
Meanwhile, The United Kingdom appreciates Turkey’s sincere efforts on the sidelines of the Antalya Diplomacy Forum to bring parties together with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to meet on Thursday, sources said.
Turkey has sought to mediate between Russia and Ukraine and offered on several occasions to host talks.
Maintaining its neutral and balanced stance, Turkey continues its diplomatic efforts to de-escalate the Ukraine conflict, urging all sides to exercise restraint. While Ankara has opposed international sanctions designed to isolate Moscow, it also closed the Bosporus and Dardanelles under a 1936 pact, allowing it to prevent some Russian vessels from passing through the Turkish Straits.
British diplomatic sources said that although there were slight differences in the scale of the responses, Turkey and the U.K. were on the same page in their analysis of Russia’s violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty according to international law.
Recalling that Turkey and the U.K. voted in the direction condemning Russia in the resolution on the condemnation bill against Russia at the United Nations General Assembly, sources said they respect differences in the extent of the countries’ reactions to Russia.
The sources underlined Ukraine’s right to self-defense, expressing satisfaction with Turkey’s practice of preventing warships of the warring parties from passing through the straits in accordance with the Montreux Convention.
Under the 1936 Montreux Convention, NATO member Turkey has control over the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits linking the Mediterranean and Black seas. The pact gives Ankara the power to regulate the transit of naval warships and to close the straits to foreign warships during wartime and when it is threatened.
The sources said Ukraine used its choice as a liberal democracy in favor of becoming part of the free world and the issue of the country becoming a member of NATO was not relevant to the point reached today.
The British government was imposing economic sanctions, and Parliament was also preparing a number of legislative acts on the freezing of billions of dollars of assets of Russian oligarchs located in the U.K.
The U.K. is shoring Ukraine with defensive weapons, humanitarian assistance aid and economic support. Furthermore, last week, London announced that a full asset freeze and travel ban has been imposed against Alisher Usmanov and Igor Shuvalov, two of Russia’s leading oligarchs with significant interests in the U.K. and close links to the Kremlin.
It asserts that Russia’s assault on Ukraine is an unprovoked, premeditated and needless attack against a sovereign democratic state and that Russian concerns about a threat from NATO encroaching its borders are not valid.
In a recent article by U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson published in The New York Times, he urged countries to do more to help Ukraine defend itself.
“More and more nations are willing to provide defensive equipment. We must act quickly to coordinate our efforts to support the government of Ukraine,” he said, adding, “No matter how long it takes, we must prevent any creeping normalization of what Russia does in Ukraine.”
“We cannot allow the Kremlin to bite off chunks of an independent country and inflict immense human suffering and then creep back into the fold.”
