In March 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian officials falsely claimed that public health facilities in Ukraine were "secret U.S.-funded biolabs" purportedly developing biological weapons, which was debunked by multiple media outlets, scientific groups, and international bodies. The claim was amplified by China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Chinese state media, and was also promoted by followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory and subsequently supported by other far-right groups in the United States. Russian scientists, inside and outside Russia, have publicly accused the Russian government of lying about evidence for covert "bioweapons labs" in Ukraine, saying that documents presented by Russia's Defense Ministry describe pathogens collected for public health research. The "bioweapons labs" claim has also been denied by the US, Ukraine, the United Nations, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Both the U.S. and Ukraine have signed a treaty, the Biological Weapons Convention, effectively banning biological and toxin weapons by prohibiting their development, production, acquisition, transfer, stockpiling and use.
Background on the laboratories In 2005, the Ukrainian Ministry of Health and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) signed an agreement to prevent the spread of technologies and pathogens that might be used in the development of biological weapons. 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. The Ukrainian-owned threat reduction labs, which are listed by the U.S. Embassy, also send academics to international scientific conferences who publicize their work. The agreement indicated the U.S. would provide assistance at no cost to Ukraine. A 2013 Congressional Research Service report notes that the U.S. has completed upgrades at secured labs in Ukraine and that the DoD continues to support upgrades and training at these facilities. As of 2019, the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine issued a statement that U.S. Department of Defense’s Biological Threat Reduction Program (BTRP) supports many collaborative research projects with Ukraine and that the program had upgraded many laboratories and built two others in Ukraine. In 2020, the Security Service of Ukraine noted that as part of the 2005 agreement, "a number of state laboratories located in Odesa, Kharkiv, Lviv, Kyiv, Vinnytsia, Kherson, and Dnipropetrovsk regions were modernized", and that "We emphasize that these laboratories are financed from the state budget". On February 27, 2022, USA Today, in a fact check, said that according to the Security Service of Ukraine, "The labs are owned and funded by the Ukrainian government." On March 11, 2022, the U.S. Department of Defense issued a fact check that stated "The United States, through BTRP, has invested approximately $200 million in Ukraine since 2005, supporting 46 Ukrainian laboratories, health facilities, and diagnostic sites." On March 13, 2022, Forbes asserted there was "no evidence of the U.S. supporting biological labs in Ukraine."
Kremlin accusations and spread of conspiracy theory
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." On March 11, 2022, Russia called a meeting in the UN to discuss the allegations, which Reuters described as an attempt to re-assert the unproven allegations without evidence. This led the UN to say there was no evidence of a Ukraine biological weapons program, while the United States and its allies accused Russia of spreading the claim as a prelude to Russia potentially launching biological or chemical attacks. 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:
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