No, Putin did not invade Ukraine over its child trafficking, money laundering | Fact check

Gabrielle Settles, USA TODAY
·7 min read
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The claim: Putin invaded Ukraine to take out the ‘main hub’ for bioweapons labs, child trafficking and money laundering

A July 17 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) shows an illustration of Russian President Vladimir Putin and a claim that he invaded Ukraine to take down crime.

“I don’t always invade Ukraine. But when I do, it’s to take out the NWO’s bio weapons labs, child trafficking & money laundering main hub” the text in the illustration reads. “And oh, liberate the Ukrainian people!”

The post was shared by Dr. Christiane Northrup, a retired celebrity physician who has regularly spread anti-vaccine misinformation. Northrup’s post gained more than 1,400 likes in two days.

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Our rating: False

This post misstates the reasons Putin put forth as justification for the Ukraine invasion, though Putin's real reasons have also been based on false claims. Statistics also show that Ukraine is far from the world's capital of money laundering or child trafficking. And the claim about bioweapons labs has been disproven as a conspiracy theory.

Putin's real reasons for the invasion

On the morning of Feb. 24, 2022, Russia launched its invasion into Ukraine, with Putin dubbing it a “special military operation.”

Putin did not make any statement that Ukraine was the “main hub” for money laundering, child trafficking or bioweapons labs. But his stated reasons for invading were also false.

“The purpose of this operation is to protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kyiv regime. To this end, we will seek to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation,” he said in a televised speech that day.

At that point, there was no evidence of genocide in Ukraine. United Nations statistics showed that the number of civilian deaths in Eastern Ukraine had fallen sharply from 2,084 in 2014 to 18 deaths in 2021. After the war began, however, the United Nations recorded 8,490 deaths from the start of the invasion up to April 2023.

Putin also claimed in his speech that Ukraine is led by a neo-Nazi government. But experts have previously confirmed with USA TODAY that Ukraine is not under Nazi regime, and hasn’t been since World War II. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish and has family members that were killed in the Holocaust.

So what’s the real reason behind the invasion? Evidence shows it’s a land grab. Putin does not consider Ukraine to be its own country, even though it became an independent nation from the Soviet Union in 1991.

“I want the authorities in Kyiv and their real overlords in the West to hear me: The residents of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson are becoming our citizens,” NPR reported Putin as saying after he illegally annexed those territories. “Forever.”

Fact check: Putin's claims justifying war in Ukraine are baseless, experts say

‘Bioweapons’ claim is still wrong

“Bioweapons” and “biolabs” are two words tied to a conspiracy theory spread by Russia, China and right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson, among others, who have all said the United States government funded bioweapons labs and research in Ukraine.

That's a stark misrepresentation of a 2005 treaty between the U.S. and Ukraine. The treaty aimed to prevent biological threats, not create them.

The labs referenced in the treaty are funded and operated by the Ukrainian government. The United States agreed to provide assistance to the Ministry of Health of Ukraine “at no cost.” The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine denounced the bioweapon disinformation in an April 2020 statement.

The post references the "NWO's bio weapons labs." NWO stands for "new world order," which references a long-debunked conspiracy theory that a group of global elites plan to take over and establish a one-world government.

Ukraine far from being world capital of money laundering

It's difficult to track and rank countries in relation to money laundering, because it takes place under the radar, said Tom Cardamone, president and CEO of Global Financial Integrity, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that focuses on corruption and money laundering.

“So educated guesses can be made, but definitely saying country X is the money laundering capital of the world would not be accurate,” Cardamone said.

The Basel Institute on Governance, a nonprofit research organization in Switzerland, monitors the risk of money laundering and terrorist financing across the world based on a “jurisdiction’s vulnerability” to these financial crimes and its ability to counter it. In 2022, Basel gave Ukraine a risk score of 5.09 out of 10, placing it in the middle of the 128 ranked countries. The highest score went to The Democratic Republic of the Congo, at 8.3 out of 10.

Ukraine wasn’t 'main hub' for child trafficking

The U.S. State Department ranked Ukraine as a Tier 2 country in its 2023 Trafficking in Persons global report. Tier 2 countries don't fully meet minimum requirements to eliminate human trafficking as required by the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 but are making “significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance."

And the war is making this worse, not better. The State Department wrote that the “Russian government’s ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine creates significant vulnerabilities to trafficking for the millions of refugees who have fled Ukraine and for the internally displaced persons and others in need of humanitarian aid and protection assistance within Ukraine.”

Kristen Leanderson Abrams, senior director of combatting human trafficking at the Washington, D.C.-based McCain Institute, said she has no reason to believe that Russia invaded Ukraine because it was the "main hub" for child sex trafficking.

“In reality, Russia’s invasion has created additional vulnerability among Ukrainian children – particularly those who might have been displaced,” she said.

USA TODAY reached out to Northrup, who shared the post, for comment, but did not immediately receive a response.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Viral post misstates reasons for Ukraine invasion | Fact check