QAnon Conspiracy Theorists Amplifying Russian Claims of US Bioweapons Labs in Ukraine

US media is report­ing that QAnon con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists are ampli­fy­ing Russ­ian infor­ma­tion alleg­ing US bioweapons labs in Ukraine. Accord­ing to a Newsweek report:

Pen­ta­gon spokesman John Kir­by on Wednes­day denied accu­sa­tions from Rus­sia that the U.S. had bioweapons labs in Ukraine, but QAnon con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists have already wide­ly spread Rus­si­a’s claims through­out its com­mu­ni­ca­tions chan­nels. Evi­dence also shows many mem­bers of QAnon believe a “base­less” the­o­ry that the Russ­ian war is actu­al­ly a secret mis­sion backed by for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump to destroy clan­des­tine bioweapon labs cre­at­ed by Dr. Antho­ny Fau­ci, the chief med­ical advi­sor to Pres­i­dent Joe Biden. NBC report­ed on March 4 that the the­o­ry was being spread dur­ing the Amer­i­can off­shoot of the “Free­dom Con­voy” of protest­ing truck­ers in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., by mem­bers of QAnon. Along with ground­less claims that Fau­ci is try­ing to cre­ate a pathogen for a new pan­dem­ic, the con­spir­acists also false­ly state he cre­at­ed the COVID-19 pandemic.[…]

For­eign Pol­i­cy report­ed on March 2 that believ­ers of QAnon are wide­ly spread­ing the con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry that Rus­sia is tar­get­ing labs in Ukraine to stop Fau­ci from cre­at­ing a new virus sim­i­lar to COVID-19. Accord­ing to the mag­a­zine, mes­sages about the the­o­ry have hun­dreds of thou­sands of hits each day on the plat­forms. Russ­ian offi­cials are feed­ing the false nar­ra­tive. On Wednes­day, Rus­si­a’s for­eign min­istry spokesper­son Maria Zakharo­va said Moscow pos­sessed doc­u­ments that proved the Ukrain­ian health min­istry had ordered the destruc­tion of pathogen sam­ples before Russ­ian mil­i­tary forces moved into Ukraine.On Thurs­day, the Russ­ian Defense Min­istry released infor­ma­tion to the pub­lic on social media. It claims the U.S. and Ukraine are con­spir­ing to spread dis­eases through migra­to­ry birds.

Read the rest here.

In mid-Feb­ru­ary, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed that Russ­ian media was claim­ing the Unit­ed States was devel­op­ing bio­log­i­cal weapons in a net­work of labs in Ukraine.

In Octo­ber 2020, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed that Russia’s Inter­net Research Agency was attempt­ing to use social media accounts to boost the role of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries pro­mot­ed by QAnon.

Accord­ing to the BBC, QAnon is: 

…a wide-rang­ing, unfound­ed con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry that says that Pres­i­dent Trump is wag­ing a secret war against elite Satan-wor­ship­ping pae­dophiles in gov­ern­ment, busi­ness and the media .QAnon believ­ers have spec­u­lat­ed that this fight will lead to a day of reck­on­ing where promi­nent peo­ple such as for­mer pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Hillary Clin­ton will be arrest­ed and exe­cut­ed.  

Read the entire arti­cle here.