DISINFO: A biolab leak would benefit the US
SUMMARY
A US outlet revealed that hundreds of incidents in US biolaboratories have taken place in the last 20 years, most of which have remained hidden to the public. An eventual pathogen leak from a biolaboratory would benefit the US, as it allows to sell medicines to an infected population. It is a lethal lottery where everybody wins. This revelation takes places amid an ongoing scandal around the US biolaboratories in Ukraine.
RESPONSE
Conspiracy theory not based in any evidence. This disinformation story exploits an original series of articles published by the US outlet The Intercept about hundreds of previously undisclosed accidents in US biolabs throughout 18 years. However, pro-Kremlin disinformation distorts these findings to promote the baseless claim that “the US” may see a potential accident as a side benefit as it could extract profit of the crisis through drug sales. Not only there is nothing to back this assertion: this story also falsely portrays the US as a monolithic entity without any distinction between different government branches and between public and private institutions, which doesn’t make sense.
The ultimate goal is to promote a wider disinformation campaign about US-funded biolaboratories in Ukraine for military purposes, which have been repeatedly debunked, including by the UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Izumi Nakamitsu, but pro-Kremlin outlets and Russian authorities continue promoting this disinformation narratives. These allegations are part of a years-old disinformation campaign conducted by the Kremlin, and is currently deployed in an attempt to justify Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives in our database, such as claims that Russia presented evidence of US biolabs in Ukraine at the convention on biological weapons, that new evidence of US military-biological activity emerged in Ukraine, that disease outbreaks in Ukraine are linked to the activity of US biolabs, that Zelenskyy ordered the destruction of evidence regarding the development of biological weapons, or that bio-experiments in US labs turned Ukrainian soldiers into ‘most cruel monsters’.