Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia’s Security Council, has declared that “it became clear” that advisers from the United States encourage and support the Ukrainian government’s efforts to create biological and nuclear weapons.

Speaking at a conference on national security held at Russia’s North Caucasus Federal District on Tuesday, Patrushev argued that Ukraine possesses all the things needed for such an undertaking – resources, expertise, technology, and delivery systems – and that Russia simply couldn’t allow Ukraine to procure nuclear weapons.

The Ukrainian leadership’s talk about the prospects of changing the country’s nuclear status wasn’t just hot air, and such a development would have posed a security risk not just to Russia but to the entire world, Patrushev stated.

Patrushev also insisted that the aforementioned threats to Russia’s security were created in Ukraine by the United States and its allies.

He also said that Russia procured information that confirms the “implementation of military-biological programmes in biological laboratories established in Ukraine with the direct involvement of foreign consultants and advisers, including their funding from the United States.”

US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland expressing concern about preventing research materials from those laboratories from falling into Russia’s hands was not a coincidence, he added.

Last week, Russian Ministry of Defense spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said that the goal of Pentagon-funded biological research in Ukraine was to establish a covert mechanism for spreading deadly pathogens.

He also said that documents originating from bio labs in Ukraine, the United States planned to conduct work on avian, bat and reptile pathogens in Ukraine in 2022, and further study the possibility of transmission of African swine fever and anthrax by these creatures.

The laboratories also performed experiments with samples of bat coronavirus, Konashenkov added.