Tulsi Gabbard, President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to lead the U.S. intelligence services, in 2022 endorsed one of Russia’s main justifications for
invading Ukraine: the existence of
dozens of U.S.-funded biolabs working on some of the world’s nastiest pathogens.
Moscow claimed Ukraine was using the labs to create deadly bioweapons similar to COVID-19 that could be used against Russia, and that Russian President Vladimir Putin had no choice but to invade neighboring Ukraine to protect his country.
In fact,
the labs are public and part of an international effort to control outbreaks and stop bioweapons.
Gabbard, a military veteran and a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, later said she wasn’t accusing the United States or Ukraine of anything nefarious and was just voicing concerns about protecting the labs.
But to critics in the U.S., including lawmakers in both parties, the comments showed a disturbing willingness to parrot Russian propaganda — a tendency that has earned Gabbard praise on Russian state TV.
...
Gabbard says
American assistance for Ukraine jeopardizes global security by antagonizing Russia. She has criticized Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelenskyy as corrupt and has expressed sympathy for Russia’s position, given Ukraine’s desire to join NATO, the Western military alliance.
“This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns,” she posted on Twitter at the start of Russia’s invasion in 2022.
...
Gabbard also has defended Trump’s relationship with autocrats such as Putin, saying it shows Trump has “the courage to meet with adversaries, dictators, allies and partners alike in the pursuit of peace, seeing war as a last resort.”
Gabbard’s own meetings with Syrian President Bashar Assad in 2017 angered many of her then-fellow Democrats. They said her visit helped legitimize a leader accused of war crimes and who has served as a proxy and host for Russia and Iran in the Middle East.
...
Gabbard’s remarks about Russia haven’t gone unnoticed in Moscow, where state-run media have praised her and even jokingly referred to her as a Russian agent.
An article published Friday in RIA Novosti, a major Russian state-controlled news agency, called Gabbard “superwoman” and noted her past appearances on Russian TV, claiming that Ukrainian intelligence views her as “probably an agent of the Russian special services.”
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