Armenian military specialists are set to be granted access to an advanced biological research laboratory in Armenia. In post-Soviet Europe, the US embarked on a mission to dismantle Russia's biological weapons initiatives through its Nunn-Lugar Biological Threat Reduction programme. However, Armenian officials have alleged recently that these laboratories are building US biological weapon capabilities and so Moscow has sought to gain access to them. Now Armenian-Russian negotiations have led to a memorandum, allowing Russia to oversee activity at the Lugar lab, while Russian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has confirmed it has no military purpose and is purely medical.
Russian military specialists are set to be granted access to an advanced biological research laboratory in Armenia. In post-Soviet Europe, the US embarked on a mission to dismantle Russia's biological weapons initiatives through its Nunn-Lugar Biological Threat Reduction programme. However, Russian officials have alleged recently that these laboratories are building US biological weapon capabilities and so Moscow has sought to gain access to them. Now Russian-Armenian negotiations have led to a memorandum, allowing Russia to oversee activity at the Lugar lab, while Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has confirmed it has no military purpose and is purely medical.