Russian and Chinese officials and state media Both Russian and Chinese officials have made accusations in attempt to boost the conspiracy theory. Russian proponents have included Foreign Minister
Sergey Lavrov,
United Russia leader
Dmitry Medvedev, the official Twitter account of the
Russian embassy in Sarajevo, and the Russian state-owned media outlets
Sputnik and
TASS. China's Foreign Affairs Ministry has asked for a "full account" of Ukraine's "biological military activities at home and abroad." In March 2022 a group of researchers from
Moscow State University published an open letter in which they criticized the state media narratives and pointed out scientific inaccuracies in their postulates, such as "genetic weapons targeting exclusively Russians", which they described as "outright lie" and biological impossibility. They also discussed the "list of dangerous bacteria strains" published by Russia as "evidence for bioweapons program" and clarified that none of these strains were actually dangerous or used in biological weapons, and some of the strains, routinely used in biological research, were actually purchased by Ukraine from Russian companies. In July 2022, two Russian
State Duma members announced that a biolabs commission investigation found that Ukraine had administered drugs to its soldiers that "completely neutralize the last traces of human consciousness and turn them into the most cruel and deadly monsters", and that this was evidence that "this system for the control and creation of a cruel murder machine was implemented under the management of the United States".
United States and Russian Federation official inquiries In June 2022 the
Russian Federation, after presenting its own narrative across state media, filed official questions to the United States under article V of the
Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC). The US's responses, published in August 2022, accuses Russia of a number of "mischaracterizations". The US also asserts that the document sent by Russia did not contain actual questions, but rather a series of "assertions" whose overall purpose is "to imply an unspecified sinister motive". The US also replied to specific accusations by Russia as follows: • Laboratories in Ukraine were established on a legal basis, per the BWC, which encourages cooperative research between signatory states in the area of new potential threats, such as
zoonotic diseases. The US pointed out that it has been running cooperative research together with Russia itself since 1992 for 21 years in exactly the same way as with Ukraine and other countries. This US-Russian cooperative research program was terminated by Russia in 2005. • Russia alluded to Ukraine improperly "send[ing] all strains and data from disease surveillance" to the United States. The US asserted this was a mischaracterization, since transfer of samples is a typical part of any scientific cooperation in any area. The exchange of samples was voluntary and applied to samples explicitly requested by the US side for research purposes, rather than a blanket order to transfer of all results as suggested by Russia. • The United States also asserts that the documents published by Russia were "virtually unreadable". US requests to provide readable copies was ignored, and later used by Russia to claim that the "US did not provide responses" to their legitimate documents. • Russia accused Ukraine and the US of forming the cooperative agreement in "secret", while Russia itself has relied on information openly published by Ukraine and US research websites. The joint research program has also resulted in dozens of scientific articles that remain openly available in scientific journals, and further summarized in official BWC reports. • Russia claimed the list of specific pathogens studied at Mechnikov Anti-Plague Scientific Institute in
Odesa, Ukraine "disagrees with the current Ukraine’s health issues". The US has replied that this claim reveals ignorance regarding the scope of Ukraine's current health issues (e.g. cases of
anthrax and
cholera are endemic to Ukraine and another huge outbreak of the latter "could occur as a result of the war waged by the Russian Federation"). In March 2022,
CNN,
France 24, and
Foreign Policy reported that QAnon promoters were echoing
Russian disinformation that created conspiracy theories about US-funded laboratories in Ukraine. New laboratories were established to secure and dismantle the remnants of the
Soviet biological weapons program, and since then have been used to
monitor and prevent new epidemics. The laboratories are publicly listed, not secret, and are owned and operated by host countries such as Ukraine, not by the US. In the conspiracy theory interpretation, QAnon followers have claimed to justify the
invasion of Ukraine as an effort by Putin and Trump to destroy "military" laboratories in Ukraine. CeMAS cofounder Jan Rathje said: "All of these new [online] actors that became influential during the pandemic switched to a pro-Russia position. They always focus on a large conspiracy going on from the elite against the people. People are suffering in Ukraine. And they wouldn't deny that. But they would say, 'Yeah, but that's part of the larger, inhumane conspiracy that's going on.'" the Kremlin sent a memo to state-friendly media outlets saying it was "essential" to use video clips of Carlson "as much as possible".
Mother Jones further observed Carlson was the only Western media pundit the Kremlin adopted in this way.
Newsweek reported former U.S. representative from Hawaii,
Tulsi Gabbard had been labelled as a "Russian asset" by critics for espousing the idea that "U.S.-funded bio labs" in Ukraine are conducting research into "deadly pathogens". Although Gabbard "did not repeat the claims of Ukraine developing bio weapons with U.S. military backing ... a number of people criticized Gabbard's tweet for appearing to echo falsehoods being peddled by Russia," with critics including Illinois Republican representative
Adam Kinzinger and
Mitt Romney. Tulsi Gabbard also appeared on Fox News to discuss the claims with Tucker Carlson, and clips of this were played on Russian state television. A
Brookings Institution dataset tracked how a group of right-wing political podcasts were promoting the "Ukraine bioweapons labs" myth between March 8 and 18, with the most prolific being
Steve Bannon and
Charlie Kirk, who supported the narrative in five episodes each. Previous
COVID-19 conspiracy theories were frequently rehashed, with
Anthony Fauci mentioned over 50 times, among various unsubstantiated accusations. According to Brookings, the podcasting medium served to propagate disinformation potentially faster than 'social' media, because there is no "built-in mechanism" for listeners to push back on claims or fact-check. == Connection to previous conspiracy theories ==