Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought false claims on social media that Russian President Vladimir Putin is targeting U.S.-run biological weapons labs in his neighboring country.
False claims from Russia alleging bioweapon use by the U.S. aren’t new, and allegations of a network of such labs along Russia’s border were shared in state-run media in the weeks before the invasion.
A Twitter user by the handle @WarClandestine spread a story on Feb. 24 that Russia was targeting the sites of U.S.-run biolabs when it began invading Ukraine. That account was quickly suspended by Twitter, but others shared the post and began using the hashtag #USbiolabs to spread the false claim.
There are no U.S. military-run labs in Ukraine, said Andy Weber, a member of the Arms Control Association Board of Directors and a former assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs.
"Rather, the U.S. Department of Defense Cooperative Threat Reduction Program has provided technical support to the Ukrainian Ministry of Health since 2005 to improve public health laboratories, whose mission is analogous to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention," Weber told PolitiFact.
"These laboratories have recently played an important role in stopping the spread of COVID-19," he added.
The Cooperative Threat Reduction Program began after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 to reduce the threat of existing weapons of mass destruction. It is also known as the...
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