DISINFORMATION: Ukrainian bioweapons transit Romania and the Republic of Moldova

NARRATIVES: 1. The USA produces biological weapons on the territory of Ukraine. 2. The export of pathogens from Ukraine transits Romania, the Republic of Moldova and other states.

PURPOSE: To justify Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. To demonize the West in the eyes of Russian speakers in the ex-Soviet space.

WHY THE NARRATIVES ARE FALSE: The statements of Russian officials and the reports of specialized commissions in Moscow regarding the activity of laboratories synthesizing biological weapons provide no evidence in that regard. There were no US-funded bioweapons laboratories in Ukraine. In 2007, Ukraine joined the Convention on the Non-Proliferation of Biological Weapons. Despite this fact, in recent years, the Russian media and politicians have drawn public attention in the ex-Soviet states to some American-Ukrainian projects in the field of biological research, without mentioning the fact that biological research is not tantamount to manufacturing weapons of mass destruction. The Russian media omits the fact that Russia itself has received from the US some 400 million USD for biological research carried out in specialized laboratories identical to those in Ukraine. Such cooperation agreements were also signed with other ex-Soviet states.

The agreement between Ukraine and the USA in this area is presented by the Russian media as evidence of the production of weapons of mass destruction. All documents, agreements, research and funding sources are transparent and have been published by the US Embassy or research facilities in different cities.

In 2022, one the sidelines of talks at the level of the UN Security Council, Izumi Nakamitsu, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament, stated that the analyses and reports of international experts prove there are no laboratories manufacturing biological weapons on the territory of Ukraine, nor have such programs ever been financed. Nevertheless, despite the absence of evidence, a Russian State Duma published a report investigating biological crimes, whereas in 2023 protecting the country against biological and chemical hazards was added to the Foreign Policy Doctrine of the Russian Federation.

Moreover, Russian propaganda claims that bioweapons are directed against certain ethnic groups, especially Russians. In 2017, a specialized commission of the Academy of Sciences of the Russian Federation published a research study criticizing the fake news circulated in the media about genetic weapons in Ukraine, Georgia and other states. Russian specialists write that the selective extermination of certain ethnic groups by using biological weapons is impossible. Despite these observations, Russian propaganda continued to use this topic to justify destabilizing actions and wars in the ex-Soviet states.

The narrative references Romania and the Republic of Moldova in order to provide the story with more formal legitimacy and to generate anti-Ukrainian attitudes in the respective societies.

BACKGROUND: After the launch of the full-scale invasion, the narrative about weapons of mass destructions was used to justify Russian shelling against Ukraine. After Moscow deliberately or accidentally destroyed elements of civilian infrastructure across Ukraine, the Russian media came up with explanations that the bombing actually targeted American biological weapons laboratories located in those buildings.

The themes of these propaganda narratives are very old, some of them originating in the USSR, which accused the USA of producing biological weapons directed against the Soviet people. This appears to be an obsession of the former KGB. In 2007, following an initiative by the then head of the FSB, Nikolai Patrushev (a former KGB officer, like Vladimir Putin), Russia even banned the export of biological samples. However, most of the false narratives promoted by the media in the USSR or Russia contain no factual evidence. For instance, in March 2022, Russia accused Germany of implementing a secret bioweapon program on the territory of Ukraine. In response, German experts with a university in Kharkiv published their activity reports for the past few years, revealing their research into outbreaks of anthrax, brucellosis, leptospirosis, African swine fever and how to combat them in the agri-food sector.

Veridica has been monitoring most of the Russian narratives regarding bioweapons laboratories on the territory of Ukraine and found they are all fabrications of pro-Kremlin propaganda. For example, in March 2022, the Russian media wrote that the coronavirus was being synthesized in secret laboratories in Ukraine. At the start of the invasion, Kremlin spokespeople claimed that Russia had destroyed US biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine, and in May 2022 another false narrative claimed that the EU feared tuberculosis strains produced in NATO laboratories in Ukraine. In August, the topic of biological laboratories was linked to the critical situation at the Zaporizhzhia NPP. The Russian media wrote at the time that the USA would cause a nuclear disaster in Ukraine to conceal the traces of these laboratories.

OFFICIAL REACTIONS: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Chișinău stated that this false narrative was launched deliberately on the very Independence Day of the Republic of Moldova, on August 27, with the aim of overshadowing the celebration and causing division. “It is the last in a series of false narratives the Russian propaganda uses to promote the idea that Ukraine can use biological weapons in the future. The novelty now is that the Republic of Moldova is allegedly involved in this process in terms of logistics as well. We firmly dismiss these narratives as false, designed to create confusion and ambiguity, with the aim of discrediting Moldovan authorities and the European integration efforts of Moldova”, the Moldovan MFA stated.