It figures that the disinformation and propaganda would proliferate around the Ukrainian war. And it makes sense that those spreading them would use the United States’ pre-existing conspiracy theory platforms to do it. We have a lot of them:
A new conspiracy theory has become popular among some of the online communities that formed around QAnon — one simultaneously being promoted by the Kremlin as a justification for its invasion of Ukraine. The false claim: the United States is developing bioweapons in Ukraine and Vladimir Putin has stepped in to save the day and destroy the weapons.
QAnon’s core prophecy has always been that there is a “plan” and that former President Donald Trump will rid the world of an evil cabal, culminating in the unmasking, imprisonment or even execution of cabal members. But that prophecy dates back to when Trump was actually president — now that he’s not, believers have been convincing themselves there is evidence that the plan is still very much in place, maybe even more so than ever before. In the Kremlin’s disinformation, some have seen that hope.
There are US-funded biolabs in Ukraine, that much is true. But they are not building bioweapons. Actually, it’s the opposite: Part of the reason for their creation was to secure old Soviet weapons left behind in the former Soviet republics. The State Department has described the claims as nonsense — and the US and Ukrainian governments have repeatedly, and for years now, tried to bat down conspiracy theories about the labs and spoken about the work that is actually being done in them
Russia’s falsehoods about labs like this have not been limited to Ukraine. Similar claims were made about a lab in Tbilisi, Georgia; those were proven false. Dr. Filippa Lentzos, co-director of the Centre for Science & Security Studies at King’s College London, visited the lab along with other experts and debunked the Russian claims. She told CNN the Russians are spreading the same lies about labs in Ukraine.
It goes a bit like this. The Russian government makes suggestive statements, leaving breadcrumbs that are dutifully repeated by official Russian state media — and then, increasingly importantly, by dozens of faceless websites (some of which the US has alleged are tied to Russian intelligence). Social media accounts push the idea further, build on it, make it more fantastical — and those more fantastical claims eventually end up getting picked up by official Russian media and the cycle begins again.Russia has been pushing various bits of disinformation about the US and biological weapons since the Cold War — infamously publicizing, for instance, the false idea that the US manufactured the HIV/AIDS virus.
Matt Field, an editor with the Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences, told CNN disinformation about US-supported bio-labs seems to peak when Russia finds itself under increased international scrutiny — the allegations about the Tbilisi lab, for instance, bubbled up in 2018 amid the international scandal after Russia was found to have poisoned Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, England.The methods used to spread this kind of disinformation are not new, either. Former KGB agents have said the KGB would plant stories in obscure or small publications in foreign countries and then those stories would be cited as sources in official Russian media.
That process can happen a lot more easily today. Instead of having to go to the trouble of convincing an editor at a newspaper to publish disinformation, Russia can push it out on seemingly independent websites that present themselves as news outlets but are no more than Kremlin cut-outs. The US government has identified websites working in tandem with Russia’s FSB security service.
Sadly, it’s not only the right wing nuts or the conspiracy theory weirdos spreading this conspiracy theory and others:
