Russian specialists, including the military, will be guaranteed access to the biological laboratory in Armenia, created with Pentagon money. According to Kommersant, the corresponding memorandum is expected to be signed during a visit to Yerevan by Russian FM Sergey Lavrov.

Kommersant’s sources familiar with the negotiation process told sources about the completion of work on a memorandum that guarantees Russian specialists access to the biological laboratories in Armenia. 

According to them, the document is expected to be signed during the visit of the Russian FM Sergey Lavrov to Yerevan on November 10–11. 

“The agreement is fundamental,” the source said.

Another source confirmed that the text of the document is ready and is undergoing interagency coordination. He explained that the memorandum provides for cooperation between the two countries in the biomedical field.

Moscow is suspicious of closed-center research centers as funding for their modernization and equipment went through the Pentagon. US Defense Department allocated $ 10 million for modernization of the Armenian National Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Russian diplomats, as well as the military, have repeatedly said that Moscow is concerned about ‘military biomedical activity’ near the Russian borders.

Pentagon rejected all allegations of secret experiments and called them absurd. The Georgian authorities, in turn, stated that only Georgian specialists work in the center. The Russian side last year refused to attend a laboratory near Tbilisi organized by NATO. The Russian MFA referred to the fact that the program of the visit to the center did not provide for a full-fledged and high-quality check of what kind of work is being done there.