As COVID-19 spread across the EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood, conspiracy theories, misleading information and disinformation followed in its wake. For pro-Kremlin media, the pandemic offers new opportunities to build on existing disinformation narratives and spin new ones.
For years, pro-Kremlin disinformation sources have been exploiting the false trope of secret Western-sponsored military laboratories “in Russia’s neighborhood”. Of these, the most significant is the case of the Lugar lab in Tbilisi, Georgia, which pro-Kremlin media have long sought to portray as a facility for US bioweapon development and other invented evils. When the coronavirus outbreak started, the Lugar lab served as a convenient disinformation template. Indeed, the very first example of pro-Kremlin disinformation about the coronavirus recorded in the EUvsDisinfo database, on 22 January 2020, deploys that same familiar narrative, telling Belarusian audiences that the new Chinese virus was likely elaborated in NATO Biolabs. Armenians also heard that Pentagon-funded labs were involved in the creation of COVID-19.
Soon thereafter, multiple disinformation messages expanded on this narrative: REN TV, one of Russia’s largest TV stations, claimed that the coronavirus served US interests as American laboratories were operating not only around Russia but also in Asian countries. RT Arabic added that the US has 25 dangerous laboratories surrounding Russia, China, and Iran. Within the span of a few short months, pro-Kremlin outlets saw secret laboratories pop up around the world: in the Baltic States and Indonesia, and of course in the EU’s Eastern neighborhood.
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Source: EUvsDisinfo
