The Russians' insistence that it has evidence of such a bioweapons program has become a major hurdle at the diplomatic negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Belarus.

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov charged at a press conference last week that "the Pentagon built two biowarfare labs and they have been developing pathogens there in Kyiv and in Odessa." Lavrov also compared the presence of the laboratories to the United States' Weapons of Mass Destruction program allegations that led it to invade Iraq in 2003 and topple dictator Saddam Hussein.

Leonid Slutsky, head of the Duma Committee on International Affairs and a member of the Russian delegation at the talks with Ukraine, argued that the purported development of biological weapons components "confirm that the Russian Federation had good reasons for conducting a special military operation to demilitarize Ukraine."

Major General Igor Konashenkov, an official representative of the Russian Ministry of Defense, charged on Sunday that "components of biological weapons were being developed in Ukraine, in close proximity to Russian territory."

Amid the Russians' accusations, the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine has scrubbed a number of documents related to the Ukrainian "Biological Threat Reduction" program.