https://www.un.org/press/en/2022/sc14835.doc.htm
—18 MARCH 2022–
SECURITY COUNCIL
8999TH MEETING (AM)
United Nations ‘Not Aware of Any Biological Weapons Programme in Ukraine’, Disarmament Affairs Chief Tells Security Council
Delegate Calls Moscow’s Claims Nonsense, ‘Rehash of Amateurish Information’
The United Nations is still not aware of any biological weapons programme being conducted in Ukraine, the senior disarmament official told the Security Council today, responding to fresh allegations by the Russian Federation of the existence of such research.
Izumi Nakamitsu, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, addressed the Council at the outset of the emergency session, as several of its 15 members denounced the meeting as a “charade” and “not worthy of a permanent member of the Security Council”.
Referring to the Russian Federation’s circulation of fresh documents alleging the existence of biological weapons programmes in Ukraine, she said the United Nations has neither the mandate nor the capacity to investigate such allegations. Reiterating her statement before the Council at a similar meeting on 11 March, she stressed that the United Nations is not aware of any such biological weapons programme in Ukraine (see Press Release SC/14827). She added that both the Russian Federation and Ukraine are States parties to the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, which effectively prohibits the development, production, acquisition, transfer, stockpiling and use of biological and toxin weapons.