Russian propaganda spread information that a national collection of microorganisms was taken out of Ukraine - and once again linked it to the work of the "military biological laboratories of the Pentagon," which supposedly exist in Ukraine. In fact, the collection has not been taken anywhere - it is stored in Kyiv. It has nothing to do with the laboratories that were actually reconstructed with the help of US funds as part of the biological threat reduction program.

StopFake received confirmation of the location of the collection in Ukraine by talking to the curator of the National Collection of Microorganisms of Ukraine, a senior researcher at the Institute of Microbiology and Virology named after D.K. Zabolotnyy NASU, candidate of biological sciences Taisiya Nohina.

"The collection is located in Ukraine. Moreover, she continues her work," Nohina said. Now the collection includes more than 5,600 cultures of microorganisms, represented by more than 1,000 species and 300 genera. It stores microbes found in the soil, water, certain plants, human intestines, and the organisms of various animals. The depository provides samples free of charge to educational institutions for training and, on a commercial basis, to pharmaceutical companies that use them for drug testing. The collection is neither secret nor dangerous - it is needed for scientific activity, and such collections exist in any developed country. It is also in Russia.