We have bio-labs in Ukraine because we are developing bioweapons," the Democratic Party presidential candidate told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson in a video interview posted on the X social network (formerly known as Twitter) on Tuesday.

"Those bioweapons are using all kinds of new synthetic biology and CRISPR (an acronym for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats in DNA) technology and genetic engineering techniques that were not available to a previous generation," the US politician, also known by his initials RFK Jr., said in the interview.

"When the Patriot Act reopened the biolabs arms race in 2001, the Pentagon began putting a lot of money into bioweapons," Kennedy Jr. added.

"But they were nervous at that time because if you violate the Geneva Convention, it’s a hanging offense," he explained.

"So they were nervous about actually going full force into bioweapons development. So they transferred the authority for biosecurity to one agency in the HHS [the US Department of Health and Human Services]," the politician added.

"But now, when you do bioweapons development, every bioweapon, it needs vaccine so you develop them side by side because in 100 percent of the cases when you deploy a bioweapon, there’s blowback. Your side also gets sick," he concluded.