‘Outright lies’: Psaki calls out Russian disinformation on non-existent US weapons labs in Ukraine

White House press secretary stresses Russia — not the US — ‘is the country that has a chemical and biological weapons programme’

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Thursday called out Russian claims that the United States has secretly operated chemical and biological weapons laboratories on Ukrainian territory as a disinformation campaign meant to gloss over Russia’s recent history of using banned chemical weapons.

Over the past several days, Russian officials have suggested the US has been operating such facilities on Ukrainian soil. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova claimed on Wednesday to possess what she described seized Ukrainian documents which purported to showed "an emergency attempt to erase evidence of military biological programmes".

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Russian media and right-wing media outlets which frequently promote Russian talking points have also mischaracterised testimony given to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday by Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland regarding “biological research facilities” in Ukraine.

In a series of posts to her official Twitter on Wednesday, Ms Psaki pointed out that Russia “has a track record” of making false accusations against the West that are meant to disguise unlawful actions taken by their own agents.

“Now that Russia has made these false claims, and China has seemingly endorsed this propaganda, we should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them,” she wrote.

Asked about the comments at her daily press briefing on Thursday, Ms Psaki said Moscow “has a history also of inventing outright lies” such as “the suggestion that the United States has a chemical and biological weapons program or Ukraine does”.

“Russia is the country that has a chemical and biological weapons programme,” she said, adding that the objective of her prior comments “was to make clear the inaccuracy of the information, the misinformation they're trying to put out and make clear to the world that they not only have the capacity, they have a history of using chemical and biological weapons.”

“In this moment, we should have our eyes open for that possibility,” she said.