Last updated on March 17, 2022
For several days, news has been trending on fringe social media sites that the Ukrainians were operating biolabs that were hidden throughout the country. Russia has been peddling disinformation about the biolabs that were allegedly developing chemical weapons and that the United States supported the biolabs.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Wednesday called Russia’s claims “preposterous” and warned of “disinformation” campaigns being peddled by the Russian state.
“We took note of Russia’s false claims about alleged U.S. biological weapons labs and chemical weapons development in Ukraine,” she tweeted. “We’ve also seen Chinese officials echo these conspiracy theories.”
Psaki said the United States was in “full compliance” with its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological Weapons Convention, which bar countries from developing or possessing such weapons.
She said Russia has long “maintained a biological weapons program in violation of international law” and cited its military intervention in Syria in support of the Bashar al-Assad regime and its suspected poisoning of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny in 2020 with a Novichok-like nerve agent.
Some content by the Washington Post.
