Since the beginning of September 2025, Russian propaganda has once again activated the moth-eaten topic of “American biolaboratories in Ukraine.”
Recently, specialists have already debunked the message from RF Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zakharova about allegedly 36 such laboratories operating in Ukraine (https://t.me/spravdi/48911). However, the Russian propaganda machine continued its information attack.
A story aired on the “Russia 1” channel, voiced by propagandist Dmitry Kisilev (the one who threatened to turn the USA into radioactive ash), which used fragments from an interview by scandalous American journalist Tucker Carlson with Cornell University professor Dave Collum.
As we have already established in the material, as well as in a number of previous debunkings, and as other Ukrainian and international fact-checkers have verified in their exposés, the topic of “American biolaboratories in Ukraine” is a product of Russian propaganda. This is the first important aspect.
Second. Indeed, the conversation between Tucker Carlson and Cornell University professor Dave Collum took place on Carlson’s channel on August 20, 2025. However, Russian propagandists for some reason turned to this material more than two weeks later, which speaks to the planned nature of their story.
To understand the situation, it should be noted that although Dave Collum is indeed a professor at the aforementioned university, his views are more than unconventional. He belongs to the anti-vaxxer community, often speaks in his public appearances about “world conspiracy,” “world government,” shadowy figures who stand behind significant personalities — for example, even behind current US President Donald Trump. Collum quotes publications from another top anti-vaxxer — Robert Kennedy Jr. Such and similar speeches can be seen at the links:
Third, in the original, Collum does not speak about Ukraine, nor about allegedly transporting coronavirus from the USA (from North Carolina) to China to Wuhan in an assertive context. The professor says: “I think.” That is, this is his personal opinion and assumption. And regarding this assumption, he provides no facts about Ukraine. He only refers to anti-vaxxer Kennedy’s book, in which the latter allegedly “exposes a conspiracy” that COVID-19 vaccines were tested on children from shelters.
Meanwhile, Kisilev picks up this statement as an established fact. Moreover, he scales it up — talking about how since Ukraine is involved in spreading COVID-19, therefore it is involved and guilty in the fact that millions of people died as a result of virus infection. This does not correspond to reality and is outright manipulation.
Furthermore, professor Collum’s version is unsubstantiated, conspiratorial, and anti-scientific.
Fourth. It’s worth reviewing the official dynamics of COVID-19 spread to understand the falseness and manipulative nature of these claims. In Ukraine, the first case of COVID-19 infection was recorded on March 3, 2020.
In the USA, the first COVID patient was identified on January 15, 2020.
In China, the first cases date back to November 17, 2019.
Thus, a gradual spread of the disease from China is clearly observed. And Ukraine in this trend is in the last position. Neither Ukraine nor the USA were primary and first spreaders of COVID-19.
Fifth factor. A significant argument in debunking the “conspiracy theory” between the USA and China — allegedly the USA transferred biomaterials with coronavirus to Wuhan and financed these studies — is the fact that these countries both in 2018-2020 and today remain geopolitical rivals.
Transferring potentially dangerous biomaterials into the hands of a rival is illogical and absurd from the standpoint of national interests and security.
Moreover, at that time, a real trade and customs war was ongoing between the two countries. In 2018-2019, the USA applied trade protective measures that limit imports of certain goods from almost all countries of the world. The most significant were measures applied specifically to products originating from China.
The USA introduced tariffs on imports from China based on the results of an investigation into China’s policies and practices related to technology transfer, intellectual property, and innovation. In response to trade restrictions from the USA, China introduced additional tariffs of 15% and 25% on major US export items to China.
Additional tariffs affected 128 tariff lines, namely: meat and offal, fruits, oilseeds, alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, ferrous metals, aluminium, etc. The confrontation continued for almost two years.
Only at the beginning of 2020, as a result of difficult negotiations between the USA and China, it was possible to conclude the Economic and Trade Agreement between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the People’s Republic of China, which provided for the settlement of problematic issues in such areas as intellectual property, technology transfer, agricultural trade, financial services, macroeconomic policy and exchange rates, ensuring transparency. So in such a situation, financially investing in a country with which a trade war is being waged contradicts common sense.
The final argument that dots all the i’s is the conclusions of the US CIA regarding the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic, published in January 2025, and the report of the US Congressional Committee following a two-year investigation into the causes of coronavirus emergence.
According to them:
The virus has biological characteristics that are not found in nature;
Data shows that all COVID-19 cases originate from a single introduction into the human body. This contradicts previous pandemics when there were several independent introductions;
Wuhan houses China’s leading SARS research laboratory, which has a history of conducting gain-of-function research under inadequate biosafety levels;
Researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) were ill with a COVID-like virus in autumn 2019, several months before COVID-19 was detected at the seafood market;
By almost all scientific criteria, if there were evidence of natural origin, it would have been found by now.
So, if anyone can be blamed for spreading coronavirus and the deaths of, according to WHO data, 14.9 million people, it is China, but certainly not Ukraine.
And by the way, Kisilev in his manipulative scaling of coronavirus consequences claimed “billions” of those who fell ill with COVID-19. But this is a lie. The total number of people worldwide who have had coronavirus from the beginning of the pandemic until 2025 is 778 million. And this is less than one billion.
There is no talk of “billions fell ill.”
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