Is it true that NATO sent contaminated donated blood to Ukraine?

Information appeared in the Russian media that NATO donated canned blood to the Ukrainian military, in which Ukrainian doctors discovered HIV and hepatitis. We checked if this is true.

News about contaminated blood that NATO countries allegedly gave to wounded Ukrainian soldiers appeared in many Russian newspapers. Media: Lenta.ru, "Moskovsky Komsomolets", RIA FAN. "Ren-TV” published an article with the headline “A gift to Ukraine from Africa – AIDS-infected blood.” The news also spread to social networks And messengers. One of the users called Ukrainian military personnel should consider whether they should continue serving in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, given the risk of contracting AIDS and hepatitis in the event of injury and blood transfusion. Some VKontakte users wrote, that “the blood was supplied within the framework of the Comprehensive Assistance Program of NATO countries to Ukraine, agreed upon on June 29, 2022.”

First of all, on June 29, 2022, NATO did not approve any comprehensive assistance program for Ukraine. On this day the organization published updated NATO Strategic Concept. We were unable to find any information on the NATO website about the comprehensive assistance program for Ukraine, much less agreements on the supply of donor blood.

Most media outlets that published this news refer to fast anonymous Telegram channel Mash. As stated in the post, information about the infected blood was leaked “from the archive of Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmygal, which was hacked by hackers from Kombatant.” Documents from this archive were sent to the authors of the Mash channel in an email in which the sender was unknown writes in English: “Our friends from the hacker group Kombatant hacked the internal database of the office of Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmygal. It's about the Russian-Ukrainian war. We will make public the first part of the secret documents.” On its own behalf, the Mash channel adds that the Ukrainian Ministry of Health allegedly requested 62 thousand liters of blood from NATO, as it was in dire need of blood for the wounded in the Odessa, Nikolaev, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov and Zaporozhye regions. The channel does not specify where Mash got these details from.

Also in her post, Mash attaches photographs of documents from the hacked archive of the Prime Minister of Ukraine. The first two images are a photo of a letter allegedly written by the Minister of Health of Ukraine Viktor Lyashko addressed to the Prime Minister. In this letter, Lyashko describes the situation with contaminated donated blood coming from NATO countries: 

• The Ministry of Health of Ukraine conducted a random check of bags of preserved blood provided to Ukraine in July-October 2022 as part of the Comprehensive Assistance Program from NATO.
• During the inspection, the Ministry of Health identified HIV in the samples, as well as viruses that cause hepatitis B and C, mononucleosis and cytomegalovirus infection.
• The Ministry of Health announced the inadmissibility of purchasing blood supplies from African countries.
• Ukraine is asking NATO for UAH 680 million for the prevention and treatment of chronic viral diseases, as well as the launch of a joint program for screening Ukrainian Armed Forces military personnel who have already received donor blood.

Electronic analysis of the image showed no obvious signs of photomontage. However, a few days after photographs of this document appeared, the Ministry of Health of Ukraine called the document a fake and published refutation. According to them, firstly, during the entire period of the war, Ukraine never once turned to foreign partners for donor blood. In September 2022, the national initiative “Your blood can fight. Become a donor", which provides patients with donor blood in sufficient quantities. If there is a need for blood in donor centers, people actively respond to requests and fill such needs within a few hours.

Secondly, according to the statement of the Ministry of Health, Ukraine conducts laboratory tests of each blood sample and its components, and not selectively, as stated in Lyashko’s “letter”.

Thirdly, the Ministry of Health claims that the “letter” does not meet the requirements for processing official documents in Ukraine. 

In addition, as noted by the Ukrainian fact-checking agency StopFake, according to the digital signature of Minister Lyashko, the document was signed on February 24, 2022, although it refers to blood tests delivered only in July-October 2022. The unique serial number of this digital signature has already been used in another fake document, posted on the Internet by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. In this document dated February 24, 2022 (the first day of the “special operation”), the Ukrainian Ministry of Health allegedly orders the urgent destruction of biological pathogenic materials. We also compared both electronic signatures and came to the same conclusion as our colleagues.

Thus, the letter published by the Mash Telegram channel is fake. It is difficult to establish its author, since the Mash channel does not specify who exactly sent them documents from the allegedly hacked archive. The authors could be hackers from the Kombatant group, “friends of hackers” who shared “secret documents” with the Mash channel, and the authors of the Telegram channel themselves.

Cover image: WikiCommons

Fake

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