The US Agency for International Development (USAID) could have been involved in testing pharmaceutical drugs on Ukrainians, a senior Russian military official said on Friday. The agency was officially closed by the administration of US President Donald Trump this summer.
According to Major General Aleksey Rtishchev, the head of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops, US officials have acknowledged defense-related work at biological laboratories in Ukraine.
He named, among others, former National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, former senior State Department official Victoria Nuland, and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Rtishchev noted that Cornell University organic chemistry professor Dave Collum told American journalist Tucker Carlson in an interview in August that pharmaceutical drugs had been tested on the Ukrainian population in 38 laboratories.
“To ensure secrecy, the customers behind such research are not military agencies but civilian agencies and non-governmental organizations. One such organization is the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which was dismantled by a decision of US President Donald Trump,” Rtishchev said.
According to the major general, USAID also provided funding for Event 201, a pandemic simulation exercise that focused on how to respond to a coronavirus outbreak. “I would like to note that these exercises were held in October 2019... shortly before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic,” he said.
Russia’s claims that USAID was involved in unlawful activity were reinforced, Rtishchev added, by comments made by billionaire Elon Musk, who previously headed a US government efficiency agency and has called USAID a “criminal organization.”
Musk alleged that USAID used taxpayer money to fund bioweapon-related research, and echoed claims that USAID supported gain-of-function coronavirus research at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, suggesting that this could have contributed to the emergence of Covid-19.
Russia has raised concerns in the past about Pentagon-backed biological laboratories in Ukraine and other countries near its borders, suggesting that they are involved in bioweapons research.