Disinfo: Russia never meddles in the internal affairs of other countries

A recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about secret labs and development of biological weapons by the United States. There is no evidence to claim that the US is developing biological weapons. There is also no evidence to support the claim that partnering biolabs under the agreement have become epicentres for the spread of infectious diseases or have been used to attack populations. Due to the increasing cases of dissemination of false information regarding the activities of biological laboratories in Kazakhstan, Kazakh Foreign Ministry stated: "We declare responsibly that no biological weapons development is underway in Kazakhstan, no research is conducted against any other states. The CRL [Central Reference Laboratory] significantly strengthened the scientific potential of Kazakhstan and increased the safety of research. The presence of such high-tech facilities reflects the level of development of the state and its ability to respond adequately to biological threats." In the period from 2016 to 2018, coronaviruses were really studied in Kazakhstan. The project monitored the spread of coronavirus among camels and bats in several regions of Kazakhstan. Coronaviruses are a family of highly contagious respiratory pathogens. The first strains of it, dangerous to humans, were recorded by experts back in the 1960s. At the moment, according to various sources, people have studied around several dozen types of coronaviruses, seven of which are dangerous to humans. The viruses studied in bats in Kazakhstan belong to a different family of coronaviruses. The strains of the coronavirus of "Kazakhstan" bats are designated KZ3 and KZ43. They are classified as alpha coronaviruses, while SARS-CoV, MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) and the novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus (which causes COVID-19) belong to the beta coronavirus family.

This is a deliberate manipulation of the original article of Elisabeth Braw in Foreign Policy to promote the long-discredited pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative that Russia never interfered in the US election in 2016 and that the Mueller investigation found no evidence of it. Braw’s article doesn’t say that accusations of foreign interference are a narrative promoted by both Democrats and Republicans. In fact, the affirmation that Russia and China are interfering respectively against the candidates of the Democratic and Republican parties is an estimation of the US intelligence community, and Braw quotes a statement in this regard by US National Counterintelligence and Security Center Director William Evanina. The claim that Braw concluded that both parties are falsely talking about these alleged interference for political reasons is a lie. Braw’s main argument is that Russia and China are indeed trying to interfere in the US election and that their main success may be not as much to sway the ballots as to convince voters that they did. The direct quote has also been altered: “It doesn’t matter whether China, Russia, or any other country in fact manages to sway the ballot. What matters is whether voters believe they did”, says the original. She also argues that if any country interferes in the electoral process, there should be a retaliatory reaction to serve as future deterrent, something vastly different from the claims in the manipulated article. Pro-Kremlin media frequently resort to this manipulative technique of quoting sentences from serious publications and then introducing a distorted message as if it was part of the original article, in this case to promote a recurrent pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about Russia being falsely accused of interfering in elections abroad. See other examples in our database, such as false claims that British outlet The Guardian pointed to ruling elite as the real instigators of the racial crisis in the US and reported that the EU remained silent as the Europeans couldn’t buy food for the first time in 75 years; that Newsweek magazine explained how the US coup in Iran will end; that Soros’ structures in the media and think tanks saw an opportunity in the coronavirus pandemic to attack the “bad guys”; that the US National Counterintelligence and Security Centre put Wikileaks at the same threat level as jihadist organisations in its last report; or that the US special envoy for Syria admitted that Washington’s goal was to defend terrorists from Russian attacks.