Victoria Nuland, the US State Department's undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, on Tuesday testified before a Senate Foreign Relation Committee hearing on Ukraine in Washington, DC, and said that the United States was working with Ukraine to prevent invading Russian forces from seizing biological research material, OpIndia reported.

The State Department also noted that it was concerned that Russian forces are trying to gain control of biological research facilities within Ukraine. The committee was set to examine Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the worldwide response.

At the hearing, State Department official Victoria Nuland was asked whether Ukraine has bioweapons.

“Ukraine has biological research facilities, which in fact we are now quite concerned Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to gain control of,” she stated to the US lawmakers. “We are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach,” she added.

However, by saying that Russia will be responsible for a “biological or chemical weapon attack” taking place, the Nuland has in a way admitted what the Russian government has been saying all along—that US-funded biolabs are working on developing bioweapons on Ukrainian soil.

The US embassy in Ukraine had stated that they fund research programs in Ukraine that work on the “world’s most dangerous pathogens.”

Recently, the Russian Defense Ministry had stated that they had found evidence of US-funded biolabs in Ukraine which had urgently destroyed samples of deadly pathogens when the “military operation” started.