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On 12 June, the outgoing Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Tulsi Gabbard, announced that she was releasing several pages of documents pertaining to US-funded biological laboratories in Ukraine.
Gabbard claimed that the documents revealed never-before-seen declassified intelligence about the US establishing laboratories in Ukraine to study dangerous pathogens, but a quick glance at the documents says otherwise.
In reality, the documents confirm what has long been known: the US and its allies run a system of laboratories throughout eastern Europe as part of a biodefense and surveillance program designed to study pathogens with pandemic capabilities, with the goal of developing better treatments and preventative measures such as vaccines.
Upon releasing the documents, which are actually just a few pages of PowerPoint slides, Gabbard claimed she was making them public “in support of President Trump‘s Executive Order to end federal funding of dangerous gain-of-function research around the world.”
But the documents don’t actually show anything at all about gain-of-function research. What they do show, however, is the resurrection of a decades-old Russian conspiracy theory that is once again being laundered by America’s top intelligence official.
Russia’s Psychological Operation
Before Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, it spent several months deploying a psychological operation that would lay the groundwork for its eventual military invasion.
As the Kremlin sent troops and weapons to the border, Russian officials were issuing public announcements warning that Ukraine, with the assistance of the US, was running a chain of secret biolabs aimed at developing biological weapons.
According to Russia, Ukraine was preparing to imminently launch a biological attack targeting Russians and was in the midst of an “emergency attempt to erase evidence of military biological programs.” In March 2022, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, detailed the supposed plot, saying Ukrainian troops would soon unleash birds, bats, and insects near Ukraine’s Western border, where they would enter Russia and spread disease. No evidence was ever presented to support these allegations, and the UN said they weren’t aware of any such evidence existing.
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Nevertheless, Russia’s biolab conspiracy theory was quickly picked up by prominent right-wing media figures such as Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon, as well as Donald Trump Jr. and followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory. It then started gaining traction on podcasts before going mainstream on Fox News.
Soon, Gabbard — who is known to be susceptible to Russian propaganda — started promoting the Russian conspiracy theory. Throughout 2022, Gabbard took to social media repeatedly to amplify Russian disinformation about biolabs in Ukraine, eventually earning the nickname “Russia’s girlfriend” in Russian state media, which frequently boosted her pro-Kremlin claims.
Origins of the Biolab Conspiracy Theory
Notably, the origins of the biolab conspiracy theory can be traced back to perhaps the most infamous Russian disinformation campaign in history: the Soviet era attempt to link the emergence of HIV/AIDS to US military activity.
Known as Operation INFEKTION (or Operation Denver), the KGB-led disinformation campaign falsely claimed that HIV/AIDS had been engineered by the US military at Fort Detrick and deliberately spread around the world. The campaign was later revealed to be a Soviet intelligence operation designed to inflame anti-American sentiment and portray the US as a dangerous biological threat.
The Ukraine biolabs conspiracy repurposed the same basic formula of taking a real public health or disease surveillance program, attaching it to US military funding, and then suggesting — without credible evidence — that it is actually a secret biological weapons operation. Just as Soviet propagandists once alleged that HIV originated in an American military laboratory, Russian officials claimed that US-supported laboratories in Ukraine were developing biological weapons near Russia’s borders.
In both cases, the objective was not simply to spread a false story but to cast the United States as a reckless, immoral actor conducting dangerous biological experiments while simultaneously justifying Russian geopolitical objectives and eroding trust in Western institutions. And with the help of the head of the US intelligence community, that conspiracy theory just got new legs.