Nikolai Patrushev, Secretary of the Russian Security Council and former head of Russia's FSB intelligence agency, gave an interview to the Russian daily “Kommersant”, one of the largest daily newspapers in Russia, on April 8, 2021. When asked by the journalist whether China really deliberately provoked the Corona pandemic, Patrushev replied:
"Please note the fact that new bio-labs, which are under U.S. control, are springing up all over the world at a rapid pace. And, strangely enough, mainly on the border with Russia and China ... And the authorities of the respective host country where these laboratories are located have no idea what is happening behind their walls ... We are told that peaceful sanitary authorities operate on our border. In fact, however, they are more like Fort Detrick in Maryland, where Americans have been working in the field of military biology for decades. Moreover, the fact speaks for itself that in the adjacent areas there are diseases that are atypical for these regions ... There are good reasons to believe that the Americans are developing bio-weapons there."