US-Ukraine ‘biolabs story’ likely authored by Russian intelligence
CyberBerkut, a hacking group that was identified by UK intelligence as a front for the GRU (an arm of Russian intelligence), published the false Ukrainian bioweapons story in 2017. A similar story involving Georgia, which Russia attacked in 2008, dates back to at least 2011. Milton Leitenberg, a long-time researcher at the Center for International and Security Studies and the author of “Assessing the Biological Weapons and Bioterrorism Threat,” wrote about the beginnings of this tale.
Leitenberg said of the Ukrainian “biolabs” narrative, “This is ALL KGB/FSB work.” The UK government identified Cyber Berkut as a GRU front, so while that conflicts with Leitenberg’s assessment, both attribute it to Russian intelligence. Leitenberg described an article from 2011 written by “a Georgian journalist, Joni Simonishvili, in Geonews,” which he characterized as “a Russian proxy disinformation site.”
Simonishvili, he said, “turned to the Lugar Center in earnest.” The Nunn-Lugar Center is a real laboratory in Georgia, but that is where evidence and this story parted ways. By 2013, accusations about biological weapons in Georgia had taken shape. A Russian official at the time asserted:
"With the enlargement of contacts and supplies of wine products, vegetables, and other agricultural products to Russia, our alarm at the presence of a powerful U.S. Navy biological laboratory in Georgia not controlled by Georgian authorities will be increasing.”
In 2017, claims that had initially centered on Georgia shifted to Ukraine in a detailed pseudo-investigative piece from Cyber Berkut. The story also appeared in TASS, a Russian state-controlled news outlet, days later. Later in early 2018, an FSB-controlled (another arm of Russian intelligence) outlet called SouthFront ran the Cyber Berkut story under the name Dilyana Gaytandzhieva.
Although Gaytandzhieva had not been the listed author in the earlier publications, she was the listed author for the piece’s South Front debut. Gaytandzhieva later promoted the same false claims in 2022, connecting them to those made in 2017 and 2018 when she linked the 2018 version in a tweet referencing Ukrainian biolabs in early 2022. Gaytandzhieva also appeared on Chinese state media related to her false biological weapons claims, which China heavily promoted alongside the Russian state in early March 2022.
The story remains remarkably unchanged from 2017 to 2022, which may reflect its relatively dormant state after initial attention in 2018. Stories generally evolve.
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