In the past week, Russia has pushed claims that the U.S. owns and operates biological weapons labs in Ukraine, but Politifact fact-checkers, along with the White House and NATO have denied the information.
“As we have said all along, Russia is inventing false pretexts in an attempt to justify its own horrific actions in Ukraine. The United States does not own or operate any chemical or biological laboratories in Ukraine,” said State Department spokesman Ned Price Thursday.
The theories claim that the U.S. is funding bio labs to develop dangerous pathogens that could endanger the whole world and that Russia invaded Ukraine to take them over. Conspiracy theorists claim that President Joe Biden and Dr. Anthony Fauci are behind the labs.
Chinese officials, an anonymous QAnon Twitter account. U.S. conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) have notably supported the Moscow-backed claims.
Others have suggested that Russia’s theory could be a cover for their own plans to use biochemical weapons on Ukraine.
“Now that Russia has made these false claims, and China has seemingly endorsed this propaganda, we should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki wrote in a tweet last week. “It’s a clear pattern.”
On Friday, Biden warned Russia that they would pay a “severe price” for use of chemical weapons, but did not say what the severe price would be.
