
Ukraine’s biological laboratories were conducting experiments on bats to produce coronavirus, the Russian media writes. This is part of the metanarrative about biological laboratories, where Ukraine was producing weapons of mass destruction, with support from the United States.
NEWS: “The biological laboratories in Ukraine, founded and financed by the USA, were conducting experiments on bats with a view to producing coronavirus strains”, the official representative of the Russian Ministry of Defense, Major-General Igor Konashenkov said, quoted by RIA Novosti. The Russian official pointed out that the purpose of this research and others was to create a mechanism for spreading contagious diseases […]
Documents show that Ukraine was researching the process of spreading pathogens by means of migratory birds flying from Ukraine to Russia or other countries. In 2022, the plan was to research the spread of the swine fever virus and anthrax [to Russia].
Konashenko said that the Ministry of Defense will soon publish a series of documents, obtained with the help Ukrainian collaborators working in these biological laboratories, that will attest the findings of the research.”
NARRATIVE: The secret laboratories of the USA in Ukraine were synthetizing coronavirus.
WHY THE NARRATIVE IS FALSE: After the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that Ukraine was allegedly hosting secret laboratories, funded by the USA, which were developing biological weapons, Russian officials tried to add new elements to this narrative and fabricated the reference to SARS-CoV-2, a coronavirus said to have originated in bats.
Veridica.ro has recently debunked the base narrative, which provides one of the cores of Russia’s war propaganda, according to which Russia is bombing cities in Ukraine to destroy biological weapons labs and thus save mankind. In fact, Ukraine never hosted laboratories producing or developing biological weapons. In 2007, Ukraine singed the Convention on the Non-Proliferation of Biological Weapons. Moscow has presented no solid evidence confirming the existence of such laboratories, although it justified its attack on Ukrainian cities and on Snake Island by highlighting the need to destroy them.
The history of these false narratives is much older, and in 2020 the United States Embassy in Kyiv responded, saying there is no American secret laboratory on Ukraine’s territory.
The propaganda message is an attempt at inciting hatred against Ukraine and the West, blamed for allegedly bringing COVID-19 to Russia, a casus belli the Kremlin is promoting after the fact. As regards the coronavirus, Moscow is refueling conspiracy theories according to which the virus was created by the Americans in order to destroy mankind, and only Russia can save the world again.
Veridica.ro has demonstrated in the analyses published over the last year that Moscow promoted a series of false narratives, fake news and disinformation regarding the pandemic, including a conspiracy theory according to which COVID-19 is a weapon the Pentagon created in laboratories hosted by ex-Soviet states.
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