Russia says that the Pentagon plans to transfer biological research programs from Ukraine to the former Soviet republics, Eastern European countries and the Baltic countries as soon as possible in order to get closer to Russia’s borders, TASS reports.

This was stated by the head of the radiation, chemical and biological defense forces, Lieutenant General Ihor Kirillov, who previously reported that the pathogens of plague, anthrax and brucellosis were studied in biolaboratories of Ukraine.

“The Pentagon is ready to move unfinished programs in Ukraine to other former Soviet states, as well as Eastern European countries such as Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and the Baltic states, in a short period of time. The expansion of the network of biolaboratories, which can be used for the development and storage of components of biological weapons, poses a threat to the military security of the Russian Federation. Unlike nuclear weapons, which the US places on the territories of NATO allies, this policy of the alliance in the biological sphere allows us to close our borders without control,” he said.

The USA has already denied the existence of biological research laboratories in Ukraine.

Deputy US Ambassador Richard Mills called Russia’s claims about alleged US involvement in the biological weapons program “categorically false and ridiculous.”

The UN’s deputy head of disarmament affairs, Thomas Markram, repeated in May what his boss said at UN Security Council meetings regarding similar accusations by Russia: The UN is not aware of any biological weapons program in Ukraine.

h2. Troll army and Russian propaganda

The social network Twitter, especially before it was blocked by Russia, was a place where an army of trolls spread tens and hundreds of thousands of pro-Kremlin and pro-Putin posts.

An analysis conducted in March by Konstantin Barbu, a programmer and former HotNews.ro journalist, found that hundreds of thousands of posts supporting conspiracy theories that help the Kremlin or make Putin a hero were launched on Twitter by an army of people. Pedestrian

Between March 3 and March 20, more than 158,000 messages were found on Twitter that contained variations of keywords such as “biological weapons,” “biological laboratories,” “biological warfare,” and more. (trans. “bioweapons”, “biolaboratories”, “biobattle/biowar”, etc.).

The theory that Ukraine was developing biological weapons began to spread among supporters of the QAnon conspiracy movement immediately after the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the morning of February 24.

Foreign Policy magazine notes that QAnon followers and pro-Russian social media channels have begun to claim that Russia launched airstrikes against Ukraine to prevent it from developing biological weapons.