DISINFO: Maidan coup took place because former president's administration wanted to close Pentagon labs in Ukraine
SUMMARY
Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov wrote on Facebook that the administration had no knowledge on what the biological laboratories opened by the Pentagon on Ukrainian soil were doing because it was classified. The regime was overthrown in Ukraine in 2014 because it wanted to shut down the Pentagon’s laboratories.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives about the 2013-14 Ukrainian revolution (Euromaidan) and secret biological laboratories surrounding Russia. The demonstrations which began in Kyiv in November 2013 – called "Maidan", or "Euromaidan" – were a result of the Ukrainian people's frustration with former President Yanukovych's last-minute U-turn when, after seven years of negotiation, he refused to sign the EU–Ukraine Association Agreement and halted progress towards Ukraine's closer relationship with the EU as a result of Russian pressure. There are no Pentagon laboratories in Ukraine. The Ukrainian government is a member of the U.S. Department of Defence’s Biological Threat Reduction Programme that works on a number of programmes to consolidate and secure pathogens and toxins of security concern in Ukrainian government facilities while allowing for peaceful research and vaccine development. "We also work with our Ukrainian partners to ensure Ukraine can detect and report outbreaks caused by dangerous pathogens before they pose security or stability threats", the U.S. Embassy stated. Under the agreement signed by Ukraine's Health Ministry and the US Department of Defense in 2005, numerous Ukrainian laboratories were modernised. The laboratories work transparently.