A new conspiracy theory has become popular in some of the online communities created for QAnon, the “invader” in the Capitol, as according to CNN analysis, it is simultaneously promoted by the Kremlin as an excuse for his invasion of Ukraine.
It is a false allegation that the United States is developing bio-weapons in Ukraine and Vladimir Putin intervened to save the situation and destroy the weapons.
QAnon’s basic prophecy has always been that there is a “plan” and that former President Donald Trump will rid the world of a “bad gang,” culminating in the revelation, imprisonment, or even execution of members of the faction.
But this prophecy dates back to when Trump was actually president – now that he is not, his followers are convinced that there are indications that the plan is still valid, perhaps even more so than ever. In the Kremlin misinformation, some saw this hope.
“There are US-funded bio-laboratories in Ukraine, that’s true. But they do not make bio-weapons. In fact, it is the opposite: The condition for their creation was the provision of old Soviet weapons that were left behind in the former Soviet republics. “The State Department has described the allegations as nonsense – and the US and Ukrainian governments have repeatedly and for years tried to disprove conspiracy theories about the laboratories and talked about the work that is actually being done on them,” CNN reported. .
Russia’s lies about laboratories like this were not limited to Ukraine. Similar claims were made about a laboratory in Tbilisi, Georgia. turned out to be false.
Dr. Filippa Lentzos, co-director of the Center for Science and Security Studies at King’s College London, visited the lab with other experts and refuted Russian allegations, telling CNN that the Russians were spreading the same lies about the laboratories in Ukraine.
“The Russian government is making strange statements, which are being deliberately repeated by the official Russian state media and then by dozens of impersonal websites (some of which the United States claims to be linked to the Russian secret services). “Social media accounts promote the idea further, build on it, make it more imaginative, and these imaginary allegations eventually end up being perceived by the official Russian media and the cycle begins again.”
Russia has been promoting various pieces of misinformation about the United States and biological weapons since the Cold War, including the false theory that the United States made the HIV / AIDS virus.
Matt Field, editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences, told CNN that misinformation about US-backed bio-laboratories seems to peak when Russia is in the eye of the storm. For example, allegations about the Tbilisi laboratory were released in 2018 amid the international scandal that Russia poisoned Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, England.
The methods used to spread this kind of misinformation are not new. “Former KGB agents said that the KGB would create dark stories in foreign countries and then these stories would be cited as sources in the official Russian media.
This process can happen much more easily today. Instead of trying to persuade a newspaper editor to publish “information”, Russia may leak it to seemingly independent websites presented as news outlets, but it is nothing more than the Kremlin. The US government has identified sites that cooperate with the Russian security service FSB.
In fact, Moscow does not necessarily need to “push” its misinformation to QAnon fans, because they both have a lot in common. Today, many Americans are in online groups and following accounts that have been mobilized around QAnon, where Russian misinformation is sometimes embraced with enthusiasm.
On a QAnon-backed US Internet radio show that aired Monday, the announcer read word-of-mouth reports from Russian state media about biolabs.
On the show’s online discussion forum, a person who had deliberately mistyped the word “Patriot” to include the letter “Q” wrote: an end to it. “Putin has risen.”
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