Now Russia accuses US of 'experimenting with bat coronavirus samples' and carrying out research on ANTHRAX in Ukraine as White House warns Putin could use chemical or biological weapons after spreading 'preposterous propaganda'

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Russia has today accused the United States of experimenting with 'bat coronavirus samples' and developing of biological weapons in Ukraine, without providing evidence, as Moscow continued its attempts to justify its brutal invasion.

The Kremlin's accusation came after the White House warned yesterday that Russian President Vladimir Putin could deploy chemical or biological weapons in the country, and that it was using such accusations as a 'false flag' to justify their use.

Russian defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a televised briefing that 'the purpose of this - and other Pentagon-funded biological research in Ukraine - was to establish a mechanism for the stealthy spread of deadly pathogens.' 

Konashenkov claimed the ministry had obtained documents detailing US military-biological activities in Ukraine, including the moving Ukrainians' biomaterial abroad.

He said Washington 'planned to carry out research on bird, bat and reptile pathogens', as well as on African swine fever and anthrax. 

'Biolaboratories set up and funded in Ukraine have been experimenting with bat coronavirus samples,' Konashenkov added - again without providing evidence.

Both Washington and Kyiv have denied the existence of laboratories intended to produce biological weapons in the country, which has faced a Russian assault by tens of thousands of troops since February 24.

Russia in 2018 accused the United States of secretly carrying out biological experiments in a lab in Georgia, another former Soviet republic, which like Ukraine aims to join NATO and the European Union. This was widely debunked.

Russian defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov (pictured earlier this week) today accused the United States of experimenting with 'bat coronavirus samples' and developing of biological weapons in Ukraine, without providing evidence

Yesterday, White house spokeswoman Jen Psaki warned Russian President Vladimir Putin could deploy chemical or biological weapons in the country, and that it was using such accusations as a 'false flag' to justify their use

Ukrainian emergency workers and volunteers carry an injured pregnant woman from a maternity hospital that was damaged by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Wednesday accused Russia of trying to stage a 'false flag operation' by pushing claims the US was creating bioweapons in Ukraine

With a few exceptions, Russia has been universally condemned for its invasion, and has made a variety of outlandish claims in an attempt to justify it war that has resulted in the deaths of thousands of people, including women and children.

Russia itself has used chemical weapons before in carrying out assassination attempts against Putin enemies like Alexey Navalny and former spy Sergei Skripal.

It also supports the Assad government in Syria which has used chemical weapons against its people in a decade-long civil war.

On Wednesday, Press Secretary Jen Psaki sharply criticized Moscow's claims that the U.S. is building bioweapons labs in Ukraine as 'preposterous propaganda.'

Earlier in the day she condemned Russia over its 'barbaric' bombing of a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. 

The senior Biden official pointed out Russia's 'track record' of gaslighting with its accusations against the West and said the Kremlin's reports were an 'obvious ploy' for Putin to continue his 'premeditated, unprovoked, and unjustified attack on Ukraine' as Russia bombards Kyiv and other cities there for nearly two weeks.

'This is preposterous. It's the kind of disinformation operation we've seen repeatedly from the Russians over the years in Ukraine and in other countries, which have been debunked, and an example of the types of false pretexts we have been warning the Russians would invent,' Psaki wrote on Twitter.

She denied that the U.S. government produces or owns any biological weapons, and said it is in full compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological Weapons Convention.

She pointed out Russia's own track record of allegations of using chemical and bilogical weapons against its enemies, adding: 'It's Russia that has long maintained a biological weapons program in violation of international law.'

'Also, Russia has a track record of accusing the West of the very violations that Russia itself is perpetrating. In December, Russia falsely accused the U.S. of deploying contractors with chemical weapons in Ukraine.'

Earlier this week the Russian defence ministry claimed that US funded research in some 30 labs in Ukraine had experimented with the plague - also called the Black Death - along with anthrax, tularemia (rabbit fever), cholera, and other diseases.

Russia said the alleged bio-weapons programme, flouting International law, was held close to the Russian border, and pathogens supposedly destroyed by Ukraine so that Vladimir Putin's invaders would not find evidence of their existence.

The US has denied having a network of bio-labs in Ukraine, while what evidence that has been presented by Russia has been unverified and widely disputed.

Ukrainian firemen work at a maternity hospital decimated by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9, 2022

A woman walks outside a maternity hospital that was damaged by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9, 2022

Both before and since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, Russia has been pushing disinformation in order to justify the war

She continued, 'This is all an obvious ploy by Russia to try to try to justify its further premeditated, unprovoked, and unjustified attack on Ukraine.'

Psaki warned Russia's seemingly false outrage would lead to a 'false flag' operation.

'Now that Russia has made these false claims, and China has seemingly endorsed this propaganda, we should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them. It's a clear pattern,' she said. 

Earlier Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that 'millions' of Ukrainians could die if NATO does not impose a no-fly zone over his country during an interview with Sky News. 

'They want us to feel like animals because they blocked our cities, the biggest cities in Ukraine and they blocked them because they don't want our people to get some food or water,' Zelensky said.  

'We can't stop all of this alone. Only if the world will unite around Ukraine.

'Don't wait for me to ask you several times, a million times, to close the sky. You have to phone us, to our people who lost their children, and say ''sorry we didn't do it yesterday'. 

'The world did nothing. I'm sorry, but it's true. In future, it will be too late. They will close the sky but will lose millions of people [while they wait]'. 

His comments came after a maternity hospital in the city of Mariupol was decimated in a 'direct hit' by Russian rockets on Wednesday afternoon, which left women and children buried in the rubble.

In this video grab from a handout footage taken and released by the the National Police of Ukraine on March 9, 2022, people are helped out of a damaged building of a children's hospital following a Russian air strike in the southeastern city of Mariupol

The Pentagon also dismissed claims the U.S. is operating biological labs out of Ukraine as 'malarkey' after China backed Russia's conspiracy that Washington is creating biological weapons in Eastern Europe.

'The Russian accusations are absurd – they're laughable and are, in the words of my Irish Catholic grandfather, 'a bunch of malarkey,' Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said during a briefing.

'There's nothing to it,' he continued. 'It's classic Russian propaganda.'

China on Tuesday came out spewing the Russian conspiracy after the claim was originally made by the Kremlin as a way to retroactively justify President Vladimir Putin's now-14-day attack.

'U.S. biolabs in Ukraine have indeed attracted much attention recently,' Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Tuesday when speaking to reporters.

'All dangerous pathogens in Ukraine must be stored in these labs and all research activities are led by the U.S. side,' he added without providing evidence to the alleged America-run bio labs.

'The Russian narrative that they've put out there that the United States is somehow running or facilitating, you know, biological weapons labs in Ukraine and that these labs are going to pose a threat to the – this is of a piece of the Russian playbook here: claim they're the victims, create a false narrative to try to justify their own aggressive actions,' a senior Defense official told Fox News.

'It is absurd. It is laughable. It is untrue,' they added, echoing Kirby's sentiments.

Meanwhile, it's believed that Putin has his own 'bioweapon arsenal' in Siberia.

The State Centre for Research on Virology and Biotechnology in Novosibirsk Oblast is in possession of devastating diseases like smallpox and anthrax, as well as more recent killer pathogens like Ebola. 

Opened during the height of the Cold War in 1974 as a bioterrorism research centre, it is still one of Russia's most heavily guarded sites, fenced off with barbed-wire with armed soldiers permanently stationed at its gates. 

Officially, the lab now focuses on developing vaccines for lethal viruses. Last year it launched research into prehistoric viruses found in paleolithic horses recovered from melted permafrost in Siberia.  

But a U.S. State Department report last year claimed Russia 'maintains an offensive biological weapons program' despite the country insisting it had ceased such research.

China's foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian spewed on Tuesday a new Russian conspiracy that the U.S. is operating a biological weapons lab in Ukraine as retroactive justification for invasion

Earlier this week, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs' information and press department Director Maria Vladimirovna Zakharova said that in the midst of invasion, Moscow confirmed Ukrainian leadership was attempting to clean up traces of 'military and biological programs'.

She claimed these programs had financial backing from the U.S.

China then repeated the claim, especially after using a similar diversion tactic last year when questions mounted on the origins of COVID-19.

At the time, China pointed to Fort Detrick, a U.S. military facility in Maryland, as the source of the virus that led to the now two-year pandemic.

The Soviet Union falsely claimed in the 1980s that the same facility was the source of the virus causing AIDS.

Zhao also mentioned the facility on Tuesday.  

The claims come as Russia continues its 14th day of invasion in Ukraine. Pictured: A man rides a bicycle in front of a damaged apartment building in Mariupol, Ukraine on Wednesday, March 9, 2022

The biological weapons claim is just the latest round of misinformation meant to justify Putin's ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Before the attack was sparked in late February, there were multiple false flag videos released showing alleged 'genocide' of Russian-speaking residents in Eastern Ukraine, which U.S. intelligence claimed was made with altered video.

Moscow alleged this week that an operation was carried out last month to destroy stocks of 'especially dangerous pathogenic agents of the plague, anthrax, tularemia (rabbit fever), cholera and other lethal diseases.'

The bio-weapons program, which would flout International law, was allegedly held close to the Russian border. The pathogens were supposedly destroyed by Ukraine so that Vladimir Putin's invaders would not find evidence of their existence.

This is the latest in a frenzy of scare stories receiving major coverage in Russian media to justify the increasingly bloody war in Ukraine, where at least 364 Ukrainians have died and at least 759 have been injured, according to the United Nations. 

Russia has been laying the groundwork for such claims for quite some time, according to Foreign Policy magazine. 

In January, a Russian-language Telegram account warned that a 'full-fledged network of biological laboratories has been deployed' with 'American grants' to study deadly viruses that were already making people sick in Kazakhstan.

In May 2020, the Russian newspaper Izvestia made similar claims. And a close advisor to Putin accused the US last year of developing 'more and more biological laboratories … mainly by the Russian and Chinese borders.'

Russian military spokesman Igor Konashenkov claims to have received documents proving that Ukraine was conducting biological weapons research near Russia with the help of the U.S.

It was impossible to immediately verify the authenticity of the documents, which the Russians say they are still studying

The documents reportedly come from Ukraine and detail the country's plans to study biological weapons, which would which would flout International law

A factory and a store are burning after been bombarded in Irpin, in the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, March 6, 2022

The Kremlin has separately claimed that Ukraine was building plutonium dirty bombs at Chernobyl - now under Russian military control. 

Russia is also alleging Ukrainian secret services and the Azov battalion - a unit of the Ukrainian National Guard known for its neo-Nazi sympathies - plan to explode a reactor at the National Research Centre of the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology, then blame Moscow for nuclear contamination.

Scant evidence has been produced for the claims, and they are likely to be seen by the West as propaganda to galvanize support for the war inside Russia.

The West has repeatedly warned of Russian 'false flag' and 'fake' stunts linked to its invasion.

'It is clear that with the launch of the special military operation the Pentagon was seriously worried about disclosure of secret biological experiments in Ukraine,' alleged Russian military spokesman Igor Konashenkov.

He claimed Moscow had obtained documents which 'confirm that Ukrainian bio-laboratories in the immediate vicinity of Russian territory were engaged in developing components of biological weapons'.

It was impossible to verify the authenticity of the documents which the Russians say they are still studying.

'Some of them, in particular instructions by the Ukrainian Health Ministry to destroy pathogens and the certificates of destruction at bio-laboratories in Poltava and Kharkiv, we're publishing right now.'

Konashenkov said employees of Ukrainian bio-laboratories told the Russian army that 'especially hazardous pathogens' and other lethal diseases infecting agents had been urgently destroyed on February 24, ahead of the invasion.

The destruction was to conceal breaches of the Biological Weapons Convention, it was alleged. The disarmament treaty entered into force in March 1975. 

It has been signed and ratified by 183 countries including Russia, the United States and Ukraine, according to the Arms Control Association.

Separately, Russia has  alleged a planned 'provocation' by Ukrainian defenders to blow up a research reactor near Kharkiv causing 'possible radioactive contamination,' which would be blamed on Moscow.

'Nationalists mined a reactor at an experimental nuclear system located at the [National Research Center of] Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology,' said a Russian military statement.

'The Ukrainian military and the Azov battalion militants are planning to blow up the reactor and accuse the Russian Armed Forces of allegedly launching a missile strike on an experimental nuclear system.'

They further claimed that 'on March 6, foreign journalists arrived in Kharkiv to register the consequences of the provocation, followed by accusing Russia of creating an environmental disaster'.

Earlier Russia claimed that plutonium-based 'dirty bombs' were being prepared at Chernobyl.

No evidence was cited.

Russia in recent years has been accused of using chemical-agent novichok to poison both double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury and Kremlin foe Alexei Navalny in Siberia.  

Sarin gas in Syria and Putin's 'poisoning' of political enemies like Alexei Navalny: Russia's dark and 'well-documented' ties to chemical weapons and the Soviet 'bioweapon' lab

Press Secretary Jen Psaki condemned Kremlin accusations that the United States was building a bioweapons lab in Ukraine as 'preposterous' and pointed out that it was Russian President Vladimir Putin who had a history of using such horrific methods to take out his enemies.

Meanwhile, attention has turned to a Soviet-era research facility in Siberia that could be where Putin stores a terrifying 'bioweapons arsenal.' The State Department indicated last year that Russia is running a bioweapons program, though the Kremlin denied the allegation.

'It's Russia that has a long and well-documented track record of using chemical weapons, including in attempted assassinations and poisoning of Putin's political enemies like Alexey Navalny,' Psaki wrote on Twitter Wednesday. 'It's Russia that continues to support the Assad regime in Syria, which has repeatedly used chemical weapons. It's Russia that has long maintained a biological weapons program in violation of international law.' 

Putin previously shielded his ally, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, from a United Nations investigation into his use of chemical weapons on civilians in the country's ongoing civil war.

Human Rights Watch found that at least 85 chemical weapons attacks occurred in Syria between 2013 and 2018, the majority of which they blamed on the Russian-backed Syrian government. 

Both Moscow and Damascus have denied the government's use of bioweapons even though Assad admitted to stockpiling them in a 2013 Fox interview.

On 2018 an apparent sarin gas attack in the city of Douma was reported to have killed an estimated 40 to 50 people.

Putin has previously given cover to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad when he was accused of using chemical weapons on his own people. Pictured: A Syrian man wears an oxygen mask at a make-shift hospital following a reported gas attack on the rebel-held besieged town of Douma in the eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus on January 22, 2018

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Russia could 'possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine' after the Kremlin accused the United States of building a bioweapons lab in Ukraine

Russian officials claimed after an 'inspection' of the site that the attack had been staged by Western governments. 

The US State Department had accused Russia of working with Syria 'to sanitize the locations of the suspected attacks and remove incriminating evidence of chemical weapons use.'

Putin has also been accused of using chemical weapons to carry out targeted attacks -- such as those against Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny and former Russian intelligence agent Sergei Skripal.

Navalny, one of the autocrat's highest-profile critics in recent years, fell ill on a domestic flight to Moscow in August 2020. He was taken to a Russian hospital after the plane made an emergency landing but was flown to Berlin for treatment two days later upon his wife's insistence.

Labs in Germany, France and Sweden, and tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, detected that he was exposed to the Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent. 

Navalny was arrested when he returned to Russia in January 2021 and has been incarcerated ever since, despite international calls for his release.

The Kremlin has repeatedly denied having a role in poisoning Navalny. Putin laughed off accusations he was responsible when asked at an event in December 2020, and suggested it was a 'trick' pulled to raise the opposition leader's profile.

Navalny's poisoning was not the first time Putin was tied to Novichok, however.

Putin critic Alexei Navalny (seen in a video link from a prison during a court session in December 2021) was poisoned with the Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent, multiple countries have said

Two years earlier, former Russian intelligence agent Sergei Skripal (right) and his daughter Yulia Skripal (left) were poisoned by what British officials have said is Novichok

On March 4, 2018 former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal were found unconscious on a park bench in the city of Salisbury, England.

A witness told the BBC he saw Yulia on the park bench foaming at the mouth and her eyes 'were wide open but completely white.'

Skripal was previously convicted of 'high treason' by a Russian court in 2006 for allegedly revealing the identities of Europe-based Russian agents to the UK's MI6 intelligence agency.

British authorities identified the poisonous substance as Novichok and accused Russia of attempted murder. They claim Russian agents flew to England, applied the nerve agent to Skripal's door handle and then left the country, according to the New York Times. The Kremlin has denied any involvement. 

Former UK Prime Minister Theresa May said at the time, 'Either this was a direct action by the Russian state against our country, or the Russian government lost control of its potentially catastrophically damaging nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of others.' 

A Salisbury resident died in June of that year after applying perfume her boyfriend brought home a perfume bottle he found in the trash. Her boyfriend fell ill but survived. British law enforcement believes they succumbed to the same poison as the Skripals.

It appears Putin could have a whole stockpile of chemical weapons stored in what looks like a villain's lair straight out of a James Bond film.

But this is the Soviet-era facility in Siberia where Vladimir Putin's arsenal of bioweapons may be being housed today. 

The State Centre for Research on Virology and Biotechnology in Novosibirsk Oblast is in possession of devastating diseases like smallpox and anthrax, as well as more recent killer pathogens like Ebola. 

Opened during the height of the Cold War in 1974 as a bioterrorism research centre, it is still one of Russia's most heavily guarded sites, fenced off with barbed-wire with armed soldiers permanently stationed at its gates.

The 70,000sqft centre is about the same size as a football pitch and is one of 100 research and administrative buildings in the facility, known in Russia as 'Vector'. 

It is one of just 59 maximum-security biolabs in the world, a status it shares with the Wuhan Institute of Virology — the site at the centre of the origins of the Covid pandemic. 

Vector has clearance to handle the world's deadliest pathogens and workers responsible for studying the viruses wear military green, full-body hazmat suits.

The secretive level four facility is nestled in the foothills of southwestern Siberia on the border of Kazakhstan, one of the harshest and most isolated places on earth, where temperatures can plunge to as low as -35C in winter.

Russia claims the lab, one of a dozen involved in the USSR's manufacturing of bioweapons, shut down research into the weapons in 1992 after the fall of the Soviet Union.  

Officially, the lab now focuses on developing vaccines for lethal viruses. Last year it launched research into prehistoric viruses found in paleolithic horses recovered from melted permafrost in Siberia.  

But a US State Department report last year claimed Russia 'maintains an offensive biological weapons program' despite the country insisting it had ceased such research. 

It comes after the US ambassador to the United Nations claimed that Putin could use bioweapons to overthrow the Ukrainian Government, warning 'nothing is off the table' for the Russian dictator.

The lab is one of 59 level four maximum containment labs housing the most deadly viruses in the world, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where some believe the Covid pandemic may have originated

Officially, the lab focuses on developing vaccines for lethal viruses, including smallpox, anthrax, Ebola, HIV and Marburg virus. Pictured: Workers in hazmat suits at the lab

At least two people who worked at the lab have been killed from Marburg and Ebola respectively after accidentally coming into contact with the viruses. Pictured: Workers in hazmat suits at the lab

Vector (pictured in 2016, with medical workers handling the Ebola virus in medical unit number 163) is one of just two to house the deadly smallpox virus, with the other being the Centers for Disease Control and Protection in Atlanta

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Russia itself has accused the US of developing bioweapons in Ukrainian labs as part of its justification for the war, although these claims have been denied by global experts.

Former US officials and non-proliferation experts also insist the labs are working to detect and prevent the spread of bioweapons, and have also helped in containing disease outbreaks.

The lab hit the headlines in 2019 when a gas explosion left one worker with second and third degree burns. 

Bosses were forced to deny that the fire had exposed the public to pathogens stored inside. 

Fifteen years earlier, lab worker Antonina Presnyakova died after she accidentally pricked herself with a needle which contained the Ebola virus. 

And its former boss Professor Ilya Drozdov went missing in 2017 after being accused of stealing two million roubles — then worth around £27,000 — from the facility.

Professor Drozdov was put on Interpol's wanted list but has still not been found five years later, with authorities fearing he escaped abroad. 

The facility — also called the Vector Institute — is believed to be one of the locations where Russia may have continued the bioweaponary scheme, which was named Biopreparat in the Cold War era.

A US state department report last year stated that Russia 'maintains an offensive biological weapons program and is in violation of its obligation under Articles I and II of the Biological Weapons Convention'.

The document said: 'The issue of compliance by Russia with the BWC has been of concern for many years.'

The convention, which forced the USSR to officially disband Biopreparat, is an international treaty banning countries from developing and stockpiling biological weapons.

Biopreparat agency — which spearheaded the country's biological warfare programme — was founded in 1974, the same year as the lab. It employed up to 40,000 workers across five military-focused institutes. 

The Vector facility, which now employs around a third of the number 4,500 staff it had back in the Soviet era, is one of 59 level four security labs dotted around 23 different countries.

The largest facility in the world is the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, where some believe the coronavirus pandemic began. 

There are seven in the UK, the best known of which is the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, run by the Ministry of Defence at its base in Porton Down, Wiltshire — where two labs research the threat from biological weapons.

Another high-security lab, run by the National Institute of Medical Research, is based in Camden, North London, and studies flu viruses capable of causing pandemics. 

Experts are becoming increasingly concerned about the control and management of the dangerous organisms in these labs, with some warning that the safety measures are nowhere near sufficient to prevent a global pandemic caused by escaped viruses.

Scientists at the lab had previously weaponised Marburg virus — which kills 88 per cent of people that it infects

The State Centre for Research on Virology and Biotechnology in Novosibirsk Oblast (pictured) houses Russia's bioweapon arsenal of smallpox, anthrax and Ebola

Vector is also one of just two labs to house the deadly smallpox virus, with the other being the Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) in Atlanta, US

Filippa Lentzos, a senior lecturer in science and international security at King's College London, said 75 per cent of high-security labs around the world are sited in urban areas — increasing the likelihood of rapid transmission in the event of a virus escaping. 

Vector is also one of just two labs to house the deadly smallpox virus, with the other being the Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) in Atlanta, US. They are the only facilities in the world allowed to keep the virus under an international agreement. 

They are both inspected for safety by the World Health Organization (WHO) every two years, with the Vector Institute's last check-up coming in 2019 before the start of the pandemic. 

The last naturally occurring case of smallpox was in 1977 and by 1980 the World Health Organization had declared it globally eradicated.

Smallpox is estimated to have killed up to 300million people in the 20th century.  

Scientists at the lab had also previously weaponised Marburg virus — which kills 88 per cent of people that it infects.

A researcher who injected himself with the virus and died in 1988 is reportedly buried in a zinc-lined grave at a cemetery in the lab complex.

His death came 16 years before Ms Presnyakova accidentally pricked herself with Ebola and died while working in the lab.  

In 2017, Professor Drozdov disappeared without a trace after a complicated legal wrangle.

He was head of the facility for five years and knew some of Moscow's biggest biological secrets. 

A court ordered Drozdov to be arrested 'in absentia' over alleged fraud, in a mysterious case linked to Vector which was only launched four years after he left the research centre, reported The Siberian Times. 

After leaving the institute in 2010, he returned to the southern Russian city of Saratov, where he had earlier headed another major complex called Russian Scientific Research Anti-Plague Institute 'Microbe', providing protection against dangerous deceases like bubonic plague, anthrax, and cholera.

Colleagues at Vector claimed that as director he paid 'exorbitant' salaries to executives, while laboratory workers received 'humiliatingly low wages'. 

And in 2019 the lab made the news again when a gas cylinder explosion threatened to leak some of its deadly viruses. 

Russia claims there is no sustained threat after a gas cylinder exploded on the fifth floor.

Authorities scrambled 13 fire engines and 38 firefighters to tackle the blaze — which the lab claims covered 30 square metres. 

The mayor of Koltsovo claimed that no biologically hazardous materials were released in the explosion.

Since the Soviet Union collapsed, the United States has invested an estimated £7.5million at Vector to encourage the site to abandon bioweapon research in favour of vaccine development. 

The lab claims it now only works on vaccine research and is no longer involved in biological warfare. 

In recent years Vector has been involved in efforts to find cures and antidotes to killers such as bubonic plague, anthrax, hepatitis B, HIV and cancer.