The Director of National Intelligence of the United States, Tulsi Gabbard, has accused this Friday the administration of Joe Biden of having consciously funded and hidden the presence of biological laboratories in Ukrainian territory, facilities that would house "dangerous and highly contagious pathogens" and which, in her opinion, could be compromised by the war conflict.
In an official statement, Gabbard maintains that highly influential figures would have deliberately covered up the location, past, and funding sources of these centers, publicly discrediting those who initially tried to bring this data to light.
"Until now, the American people have been deliberately kept in the dark about the existence and funding of these laboratories. Powerful people have intentionally covered up information relating to these US-funded biolabs, falsely claiming they do not exist and accusing anyone who says otherwise of being a foreign agent and a traitor to the United States," she remarked.
The head of US intelligence services also indicated that, in certain cases, research on gain of function—genetic alterations intended to increase the capacity of viruses or bacteria—would have been carried out in these laboratories without transparency or regulatory oversight, directly holding previous administration agencies responsible for having misrepresented these practices.
"Despite the evident potential for catastrophic global impact that research on dangerous pathogens in biological laboratories can have (...) entities within the Biden administration lied to the American people about the existence of (these) laboratories and threatened those who tried to reveal the truth," she added.
Russia claims its accusations about the biological network in Ukraine
Gabbard's statements have provoked a rapid response from Moscow. Kirill Dmitriev, director of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, stated this Saturday that the official's words support the warnings that the Kremlin has been issuing for years, and he has held the American "deep state" and Western media responsible for feeding a "machinery of false narratives" to cover up reality.
"Russia has been telling the truth about biolabs while the deep state and traditional media denied it. This is just one of many examples of how the powerful and well-funded fake narrative machine hides the truth about Russia," he wrote in a social media post.
The Russian Executive had already denounced in 2022, based on documents it claims to have obtained during its military intervention, the existence of a network of at least 30 "biomilitary" facilities in Ukraine, operated in coordination with the United States and Germany.
According to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in these centers —which Moscow links to institutions such as the Bernhard Nocht Institute— high-risk research with pathogens and tropical diseases such as dengue, chikungunya, West Nile virus, and Usutu river virus would have been developed, with the supposed objective of converting them into biological weapons.