Microbiologist Hails Russia's Revelation About US' Pre-Covid Sponsorship of Bat Study in Ukraine

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The US-led project in Georgia and Ukraine on bat pathogens, including the coronavirus, began in October 2019, that is, before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Igor Nikulin, a microbiologist and former member of the UN biological and chemical weapons commission, told Sputnik.

"What is now published is very revealing. Counting 36 months from the end of the project, we get that it started in October 2019, that is, before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. This conclusion is important because more and more data hints at the artificial origin of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that caused the pandemic, and about the possible role of the United States in this," Nikulin said, commenting on the new documents about the military-biological work that was going on in Ukraine under US supervision, which were released by the Russian Defence Ministry.

"Please note that foci of the new coronavirus infection arose almost simultaneously in different parts of the world. But this does not happen in nature. New documents indicate that the United States planned to expand the military biological program to third countries," the expert added.

Earlier in the day, the Russian Defence Ministry has presented documents revealing that a secret project to study the ways of transmitting diseases to humans through bats has been carried out under the US control at the basis of a laboratory in Kharkov for many years.

As part of the project, the Kharkov State Veterinary Academy studied wild birds as vectors for the transmission of highly pathogenic avian influenza, he said, adding that the conditions were assessed under which the transfer processes can become unmanageable, cause economic damage, create food security risks.

As per released documents, the Pentagon began bat pathogen-related research in October 2019, on the eve of the start of the coronavirus pandemic.