The Biden administration is forcefully pushing back on Russian claims that the United States is running bioweapons labs in Ukraine, with the Pentagon calling it “Russian propaganda” and “a bunch of malarkey.”
The Russian government and media outlets have ramped up claims in recent days that the U.S. was operating bioweapon research facilities in Ukraine, with Chinese diplomats and propaganda outlets also amplifying the story. The allegations from Russia have stretched back years. The U.S. has consistently denied the claims, and Russia has never provided any proof.
“The Russian accusations are absurd, they are laughable, and, you know, in the words of my Irish Catholic grandfather, a bunch of malarkey. There’s nothing to it. It’s classic Russian propaganda,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday. “We are not developing biological or chemical weapons inside Ukraine. It’s not happening.”
At a Senate Foreign Relations Commission on Tuesday, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida asked Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland if Ukraine has chemical or biological weapons.
“Ukraine has biological research facilities, which, in fact, we are now quite concerned Russian troops and Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of,” Nuland replied. “So we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.”
A spokesperson for the State Department told the Washington Examiner that the Pentagon does not own or operate any biolabs in Ukraine. Nuland, the spokesperson said, “was referring to Ukrainian diagnostic and biodefense laboratories.” Those “are not biological weapons facilities.” And, in fact, they “counter biological threats throughout the country.”
“Throughout this crisis, Russia has baselessly alleged it is under threat, including from Ukraine and from NATO, and has alleged Ukraine plans to use chemical and biological weapons,” the spokesperson said. “As we’ve said all along, Russia is continuing to invent false pretexts to justify their horrific actions in Ukraine.”
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Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov claimed Sunday that “evidence of the Kyiv regime’s hasty measures to conceal any traces of the military biological program finance by the U.S. Department of Defense in Ukraine has been revealed.” Russian state-run news agency TASS claimed that “information was received from employees of Ukrainian biolaboratories that especially hazardous pathogens — plague, anthrax, cholera, tularemia, and other lethal diseases infecting agents — had been urgently destroyed on Feb. 24.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that “it is to be hoped that it will be possible to shed light on the activity of these facilities in Ukraine, which in fact were run by U.S. specialists.” The Russian Foreign Ministry made similar claims.
A Ukrainian presidential spokesperson reportedly said Wednesday that “Ukraine strictly denies any such allegation.”
Andrew Weber, a former Pentagon official involved in nonproliferation efforts in former Soviet states and an Arms Control Association board member, told the Washington Examiner that “the claims are totally false, and I’m deeply concerned that Russia is spreading these lies as cover for Russian chemical or biological weapons attacks against Ukraine.”
The State Department has raised concerns about China too.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that the U.S. “has 336 labs in 30 countries under its control, including 26 in Ukraine alone” and that “it should give a full account of its biological military activities at home and abroad.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian claimed Tuesday that “Russia has found during its military operations that the U.S. uses these facilities to conduct bio-military plans” and that “the biological military activities of the U.S. in Ukraine are merely the tip of the iceberg.” The claims have been promoted by Chinese state-run media outlets.
That caught the attention of the Biden White House.
“Now that Russia has made these false claims, and China has seemingly endorsed this propaganda, we should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki tweeted Wednesday. “It’s a clear pattern.”
Nuland had said that “there is no doubt in my mind” that any possible biological or chemical weapons attack in Ukraine would be conducted by Russia.
The British Ministry of Defense said Tuesday that “these narratives are long standing but are currently likely being amplified as part of a retrospective justification for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
The website for the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine says the Pentagon’s Biological Threat Reduction Program’s “priorities in Ukraine are to consolidate and secure pathogens and toxins of security concern and to continue to ensure Ukraine can detect and report outbreaks caused by dangerous pathogens before they pose security or stability threats.”
The aforesaid embassy said in April 2020 that it “would like to set the record straight regarding disinformation spreading in some circles in Ukraine that mirrors Russian disinformation regarding the strong U.S.-Ukrainian partnership to reduce biological threats.”
“The Department of Defense’s Biological Threat Reduction Program works with the Ukrainian Government to consolidate and secure pathogens and toxins of security concern in Ukrainian government facilities, while allowing for peaceful research and vaccine development,” the embassy said then.
The Security Service of Ukraine said in May 2020 that “recently, ‘fake news’ about the alleged activities of American military biological laboratories in Ukraine has been spread in the media and social networks” and that “no foreign biological laboratories operate in Ukraine.”
The State Department shot down similar claims by Russia and China in November.
“Those allegations made today are pure disinformation, plain and simple,” said Chris Park, the State Department’s deputy head of delegation to the Biological Weapons Convention at the United Nations. “They’re primarily facilities that have been supported by the U.S. Department of Defense’s Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, originally chartered to dismantle the legacy WMD facilities inherited by the states of the former Soviet Union.”
The U.S. and Ukraine signed an agreement in 2005 for the Defense Department to assist Ukraine in the “prevention of proliferation of technology, pathogens, and expertise that could be used in the development of biological weapons.”
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Russia invaded portions of neighboring Georgia in 2008 and still occupies them. The Russian military claimed in 2018 that the U.S. was running a bioweapons lab in Georgia, with the Pentagon responding then that this was “an invention of the imaginative and false Russian disinformation campaign against the West.”
The Soviet Union’s KGB similarly spread disinformation in the 1980s, then claiming that HIV was engineered by the Pentagon at Maryland’s Fort Detrick. Russia and China also spread COVID-19 disinformation, claiming that the virus originated with the U.S. military, again at Fort Detrick.
The State Department told the Washington Examiner last year that the U.S. “condemns the PRC’s false, baseless, and unscientific claims which undermine the spirit and purpose of an impartial origins investigation.”
