Anonymous telegram channels spreading pro-Russian rhetoric citing the Russian Defense Ministry claim that “in the interests of the Pentagon in Ukraine, the conditions for the uncontrolled transmission of avian influenza were studied”. This happened in the Kherson region, where strains capable of causing epidemics were studied. Also, “the US Department of Energy recruited specialists with experience and knowledge in the field of weapons of mass destruction to Ukraine”. It's fake.

The fact-checkers of the Vox Check project drew attention to the case. As part of the program to reduce the biological threat, Ukrainian scientists really cooperated with American ones. Such studies are carried out around the world to counteract the spread of the virus in a particular area. Moreover, studies of bird migration and the transfer of the pathogen by them are also being investigated in Russia.

The fake about the biological laboratory in Kherson has been spreading since 2015, when Tetiana Tomilina, who ran for the role of the Kherson mayor, spoke about it as part of her election campaign. She subsequently became a collaborator. 

Russian propaganda also talks about the alleged “recruitment of specialists in weapons of mass destruction”. Probably, the reason for the spread of this fake was the training of the National Police, the Security Service of Ukraine and the State Border Service, which was supported by the International Program to Counter the Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction of the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). These courses taught to identify “potential dual-use items and block their movement”.

Russian propagandists systematically spread fakes and manipulations on the development of biological weapons in Ukraine. This is part of the narrative that “the West rules Ukraine”. “U.S. Pentagon biolabs” have never existed in Ukraine, a Russian fake that has been circulating since 2010 and is one of the longest-running propaganda narratives. Earlier, Detector Media refuted the fake that Russia received more than twenty thousand documents confirming the work of American biological laboratories in Ukraine.