The Cold War could return with vengeance, and the US’s best adversaries are dusting off some old-school Soviet tactics.
Russian and Chinese government officials recently teamed up to openly accuse the US of creating biological weapons near their borders and suggest Americans are responsible for creating COVID-19.
Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Russian Security Council, told Russian daily Kommersant on Thursday: “I suggest that you pay attention to the fact that US-controlled biological laboratories are growing in leaps and bounds around the world. And – by a strange coincidence – especially near the Russian and Chinese borders. “
Patrushev, formerly director of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) – the main successor to the Soviet KGB – added that “outbreaks of diseases not characteristic of these regions” have been recorded in areas adjacent to these alleged bio-laboratories. . He then openly accused the US of developing biological weapons in those facilities.
Like clockwork, the Russian state media echoed and spread Patrushev’s allegations against the U.S. But this time they were accompanied by an official statement from China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Lijian Zhao, who tweeted: “The US bio-military activities are not transparent, safe or justified. In Ukraine alone, the US has set up 16 biolabs. Why does the US need so many labs around the world? What activities are performed in those labs, including those at Fort Detrick? “
Zhao made the same allegations at an official press conference, citing Russia as his source. “I noticed that Russia recently re-asked the US about its military and biological activities at Fort Detrick and in Ukraine,” said Zhao. “Other countries also expressed similar concerns.”
The baseless allegations against the US and Ukraine have come at a particularly opportune time for Putin, who recently intensified the Kremlin’s efforts to include the Donbas region. In February of this year, the Russian president ominously promised that “[The Kremlin] will never run [its] back on Donbas no matter what. ‘
Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the Kremlin-funded RT and Sputnik, doubled down on her promotion for Russia’s takeover of Eastern Ukraine, repeatedly urging “Mother Russia” to “take Donbas home”. By presenting Ukraine as a threat to Russia’s national security and claiming that it is involved in the production of deadly bio-weapons, the Kremlin may further justify its increasingly aggressive stance towards its coveted neighboring territory.
Just as Trump had helped an outbreak of violence against Asian-Americans by calling COVID-19 the ‘China virus’ and spreading baseless claims that the virus was made in a Wuhan lab, US opponents have sought that kind of hostility to America on a global scale. Both Russia and China will benefit from blaming the pandemic on the US, and if Ukraine could theoretically be involved too – all the better for the Kremlin.
It is not the first time that Russia has claimed that the US is creating and spreading deadly diseases around the world. In 1992, Russia continued a KGB disinformation campaign falsely claiming that the virus that caused AIDS was the product of biological weapons experiments conducted by the U.S. During the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, Russian propaganda channels spread conspiracy theories that the virus had been created by the US in collaboration with Britain and South Africa.
There is another common denominator in these disinformation tactics: in addition to the US accusation of participating in global biological warfare, the Kremlin simultaneously positions itself as a lone savior.
[Russia] saved Africa from Ebola, ”Olga Skabeeva of Russian state television 60 minutes stated proudly last month. While trying to discredit COVID-19 vaccines made by Western countries, Russian state media has often praised ‘Sputnik V’ as the world’s best coronavirus vaccine, even as troubling information about the vaccine made by Russia continues to emerge.
To overcome the suspension of disbelief and promote the idea that the US is capable of the worst forms of abuse against humanity, Russian propagandists are now resorting to an all-too-familiar dehumanization tactic: painting America as a supervillain.
[Americans] I don’t even have the word ‘soulfulness’ in the English language, ”RT’s Margarita Simonyan recently announced on Russian television. ‘We are soulful. They are not like us. “