DISINFO: US-developed mosquitoes will infect Russian military with dangerous diseases
SUMMARY
The US breeds insects to carry Ebola, hepatitis, HIV and West Nile. As conceived by the Americans, mosquitoes will infect the military with dangerous diseases. The United States believes that this will allow them to incapacitate the fighters.
The radius of affected area can be up to 500 km from the place of discharge. Krasnodar Territory, Crimea fall into the risk zone. In particular, such places as Rostov-on-Don, Krasnodar, Crimea.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about the US producing biological weapons in Ukraine and about the war in Ukraine, portraying the US and the West as alleged aggressors. Both narratives aim to shift attention away from Russia's responsibility for its war on Ukraine and its full-scale invasion.
Ukraine has dozens of civilian public health laboratories that work to research and mitigate the threats of dangerous diseases, some of which receive financial and other support from the US, the EU and the World Health Organization (WHO). Pro-Kremlin disinformation frequently, falsely portray this as military sites, deliberately blurring the line between biological weapons and biological research.
Russia’s claims about a US-funded biological weapons program in Ukraine have been widely refuted -including by the UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Izumi Nakamitsu and by Russian biologists who examined Moscow’s “proofs”. This particular disinformation claim aims to push back against those debunks by falsely claiming that civilian research programs in Ukraine have a “dual use”.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, exploiting emotional or psychological fears, in our database, such as claims that Russia presented evidence of US biolabs in Ukraine at the convention on biological weapons, that new evidence of US military-biological activity emerged in Ukraine, that disease outbreaks in Ukraine are linked to the activity of US biolabs, that Zelenskyy ordered the destruction of evidence regarding the development of biological weapons, or that bio-experiments in US labs turned Ukrainian soldiers into ‘most cruel monsters’.