DISINFO: Zelenskyy ordered destruction of evidence regarding the development of biological weapons weapons evidence

DISINFORMATION CASE DETAILS

AI translations:

DISINFO: Zelenskyy ordered destruction of evidence regarding the development of biological weapons weapons evidence

SUMMARY

A secret document of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine appeared at the disposal of Izvestia. It says that Vladimir Zelenskyy signed a decree on the destruction of all data of employees of Ukrainian enterprises that collaborated with the US military biological laboratories of Metabiota and the Battelle Memorial Institute.

It is possible that many Ukrainian specialists who participated in the research could be physically eliminated in order to cover up violations by the United States and Ukraine of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development of Biological Weapons.

Recall that on February 24, Russia began a special operation to protect Donbas, the main task of which is "demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine." From the same day, employees of US-controlled biological laboratories began to destroy documents and samples, including especially dangerous pathogens: the causative agent of plague, anthrax, and cholera.

RESPONSE

Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about biological weapons. This disinformation trope was used as one of the pretexts of Russia's unjustified invasion of Ukraine.

The document shown by pro-Kremlin media contains signs of fabrication. To start with, it has many spelling errors.

The document is supposed to be in the Ukrainian language. To name just a few of many errors, in the address of the SBU (Security service of Ukraine) right above the abbreviations "city" and "street" correspond to Russian "город" and "улица" and not to Ukrainian "місто" and "вулиця". The document is supposed to decree the destruction of personal data of the Ukrainian employees "of employees of Ukrainian enterprises that collaborated with the US military biological laboratories". But instead of destroying "personal files" - "особових справ" in Ukrainian, the documents orders destruction of "private businesses" ("особистих справ") of such Ukrainian employees. In Russian "personal file" and "private business" are homonyms that may explain such translation errors.

The label "secret" - таємно - is in Ukrainian but placed in an unusual place, as well as the registration number.

Pro-Kremlin outlet Izvestia publishes the exclusive document at their disposal only on a Telegram channel. There is no such publication on the website of this media.

The false narrative that the US secretly developed biological weapons in Ukrainian laboratories is recurrent. See other disinformation examples: COVID-19 is one of the pathogens prepared in US biolabs for Biological warfare. Ukrainian biolaboratories are directly linked to Hunter Biden.

Disclaimer

Cases in the EUvsDisinfo database focus on messages in the international information space that are identified as providing a partial, distorted, or false depiction of reality and spread key pro-Kremlin messages. This does not necessarily imply, however, that a given outlet is linked to the Kremlin or editorially pro-Kremlin, or that it has intentionally sought to disinform. EUvsDisinfo publications do not represent an official EU position, as the information and opinions expressed are based on media reporting and analysis of the East Stratcom Task Force.

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