DISINFO: The US has acknowledged that Russian biolab "conspiracy theories" have turned out to be true
SUMMARY
Tulsi Gabbard, Director of U.S. National Intelligence, has ordered a review of more than 120 biological laboratories outside the United States that have received U.S. funding. Over 40 of these facilities are located in Ukraine, where they are used for the development of biological weapons more dangerous than nuclear arms.
RESPONSE
This is a conspiracy theory and a recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative, accusing the US of developing biological weapons and operating military biological research laboratories around the world.
The claim is an attempt to advance the long-discredited pro-Kremlin narrative about US-funded biolaboratories with military purposes in countries around the world, which pro-Kremlin outlets and Russian authorities continue promoting despite repeated debunking.
Claims about US military biolaboratories are part of a years-long disinformation campaign and have been debunked over and over again. Specific allegations about the presence of these facilities in Ukraine have been refuted by multiple experts, including by the UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Izumi Nakamitsu and by Russian biologists who examined Moscow’s “proof”.
This specific claim distorts a real but routine administrative review ordered by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard into foreign biological laboratories that received U.S. funding. Such oversight measures do not constitute evidence of weapons activity. The laboratories in Ukraine operate under the U.S. Department of Defense's Biological Threat Reduction Programme, are publicly listed, and are owned and operated by the Ukrainian government, not the United States. The assertion that they serve bioweapons development has been comprehensively refuted. Pro-Kremlin outlets have a documented pattern of selectively citing U.S. government actions to lend false credibility to pre-existing disinformation narratives; this claim follows that pattern precisely.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that The US continues to work on bioagents selectively affecting certain ethnic groups, that American laboratories are collecting biological data from Eurasian residents to create bio ethnic weapons, that the US is preparing bacteriological weapons to kill civilians, that US plans to turn Kazakhstan into a bioweapons testing ground, that the US is preparing bacteriological weapons to kill civilians or that US-controlled secret biolabs like Lugar lab develop biological weapons.