North Korea accuses US of manufacturing biological weapons in Ukraine

North Korea has accused the United States of manufacturing biological weapons in Ukraine, echoing a Russian claim that the US is using laboratories in Ukraine to develop biological weapons.

“Today the US has set up many biological labs in tens of countries and regions, including Ukraine, in disregard of the international treaties,” the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Sunday, citing what it said had been “detected” by Russia.

“According to the discovered documents, photos and evidence, the US has set up 46 secret biological labs in Ukraine over the past twenty years, for research into an epidemic disease capable of striking individual countries and the agricultural field in the whole region with an investment of more than two hundred million dollars,” KCNA added.

In March, not long after Russia’s “military operation” on Ukraine began, Moscow repeated its assertions that the United States is working with Ukrainian laboratories to develop biological weapons.

However, the US and Ukraine denied Russia’s claims, with the United States saying the allegations were a sign that Moscow may use such tactics itself.

Izumi Nakamitsu, the UN’s under-secretary-general of disarmament affairs, said in March that the UN “was not aware of any biological weapons program in Ukraine.”

KCNA also said that it has been known that the distribution chart on biological labs, established by the US in different parts of the world, are coincided with the chart on areas of diseases and viruses broke out in the world in recent years.

“It is by no means fortuitous that assertions are made that the US is behind the malignant epidemic crisis confusing the international community,” it added. “The US is a vicious sponsor of biological terrorism throwing mankind into destruction.”

The US has a long, infamous history of using and developing Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) including biological and chemical weapons in other countries, such as what it did to North Korean and Vietnamese soldiers and civilians during the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

Washington has denied that it owns or operates any such biolabs in the country, while Kiev insisted that the facilities were only engaged in civilian research.

Ukraine breaks diplomatic ties with N Korea over recognition of breakaway regions

The developments also come as tensions continue to grow between the Kremlin and the West over Ukraine.

Recently Pyongyang recognized the independence of Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk People's Republics (LPR), Ukraine’s two eastern breakaway regions, which caused the two countries to cut diplomatic ties.

The recognition has made North Korea the third country, after Russia and Syria, to have recognized the breakaway regions as independent territories.

In 2014, Donetsk and Luhansk, collectively known as the Donbas, were turned into self-proclaimed republics by ethnic Russians, leading to a bloody conflict between the government forces and the armed separatists.

On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a “special military operation” in Ukraine to demilitarize and ‘de-Nazify’ the ex-Soviet country and to “liberate” the Donbas region, two days after he officially recognized Donetsk and Luhansk as independent republics.

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