It’s a toxic mixture that’s spreading among conspiracy theorists and made its way to the United Nations Security Council in New York on Friday. The Ukrainian government is developing bioweapons in secret laboratories with the help of the United States, Russia’s UN ambassador Wassily Nebensja claimed in an urgent meeting that Russia itself had requested.
Russia has been preparing the ground for the propaganda campaign for months. Rumors of alleged US secret laboratories have been circulating for years, especially in pro-Russian circles in Ukraine. Last fall, the Ukrainian authorities felt compelled to deny the allegations. Russia is now fueling the theories anew, since January first via social media such as Telegram. In February, Vladimir Putin also spoke vaguely about weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russia has solidified the narrative with a Defense Ministry report and the release of a slew of documents intended to substantiate the alleged secret activities.
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In the Security Council on Friday, Russia’s Ambassador Nebensia tabled the thesis that the United States and Ukraine had developed genetically modified viruses that would only affect people of certain “races”. They wanted to spread these pathogens in Russia with the help of migratory birds and bats. Since the start of the secret weapons program, mysterious diseases have been appearing more frequently in Ukraine, from measles to swine flu and bird flu to plague-like infections.
China demanded that the Russian allegations be scrutinized. Chinese officials and media have recently repeated reports about the alleged secret laboratories. The US would operate such laboratories worldwide, including in the neighborhood of China. This is obviously a tit for tat for that China has come under pressure for dealing with Covid-19 and has been accused of manufacturing the virus itself.
Russia’s indirect threat to Europe
Western representatives in the Security Council criticized Russia for using the Security Council for a campaign of lies. The US government fears that Russia wants to use them as a cover: Russia could itself use biological weapons in the war and blame Ukraine for it. Against this background, Ambassador Nebenzia’s request to European diplomats “to think about the very real biological danger for the people in European countries that emanates from an uncontrolled spread of biological weapons through Ukraine” sounds like a threat.
The US is indeed co-funding labs in Ukraine. However, they are by no means secret, but part of a program to eliminate and prevent weapons of mass destruction. The US Embassy in Kyiv has published detailed documents on the activities on its website. This shows, for example, that the USA paid for security measures for partly antiquated laboratories. And that research is also being carried out there to combat pandemics caused by biological weapons or naturally mutated viruses – specifically, anthrax, smallpox and bird flu are mentioned. Research is also being carried out on host animals such as migratory birds and bats, because they have been shown to be able to trigger pandemics.
Russia now claims these labs served only as a front for covert bioweapons programs to threaten Russia. In the US, right-wing figureheads like Tucker Carlson are busily spreading the Russian claims these days. Followers of “QAnon” have already knitted the mother of all conspiracy theories in Corona times: Russia is waging war in Ukraine to prevent US chief epidemiologist Anthony Fauci from finishing his work on the next version of the Covid 19 virus there could bring.