No evidence of lethal Pfizer trial in Ukraine

A post circulating on social media falsely claims 40 children died in a Pfizer vaccine trial, claiming "Video recordings and documents allegedly confirming the experiment and the fact of the death of children were made public by Anna Sakhno, an employee of the Kiev office of Pfizer. All the company's activities were carried out with the approval of the president's office, and even 40 deaths, as the publication writes, did not cause the experiment to be stopped. The third wave of vaccinations with the same experimental vaccine will take place in Kiev in February 2024 [sic]." 

The post links to an article published the same day in The Chicago Chronicle that claims a Pfizer employee in Kyiv, Anna Sakhno, recently exposed an ongoing, secret clinical trial conducted by the company and only known by Pfizer employees and individuals from the Ministry of Health. The alleged trial has been marred by severe violations of medical and ethical standards and resulted in the deaths of over 40 Ukrainian children and several hospitalizations. Pfizer is said to have been given direct access to Ministry of Health data, which also granted the use of multiple Kyiv hospitals, demonstrating the deeply entrenched relationship between the company and Ukraine's healthcare system. Sakhno is said to have exposed the experiment on her TikTok channel. 

However, there is no currently operational newspaper called The Chicago Chronicle, and the webpage is currently suspended. According to Pfizer, no person named Anna Sakhno has worked for them.

In fact 

Logically Facts has not been able to locate the TikTok account of Anna Sakhno. A YouTube video linked to the Chicago Chronicle article is also no longer active. With the help of a screenshot of the video's opening, we found what appears to be a copy of the video on another YouTube account.

In the video, a person calling herself Anna Sakhno claims to be a senior assistant scientist at Pfizer's laboratory in Kyiv. She states that while Pfizer usually follows strict international standards, the ongoing trials began in December 2023 and were conducted in Kyiv hospitals without the knowledge of patients or nurses administering what was said to be a flu vaccine. Sakhno claims it was an experimental COVID-19 vaccine for children called C6160b. Despite several patients being struck with chest pain and fever, a mortality rate of 4 percent, and a 2 percent hospitalization rate, Pfizer held a second round of testing and is now conducting the third. The purported experiment was done with the knowledge of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Sakhno finishes by saying she could not stand watching Ukraine become the test field for illegal medical trials. 

A representative for Pfizer confirmed to Logically Facts that the named individual from the video is not a Pfizer employee and that the "vaccine for children" named in the video is fictitious.

The representative also states Pfizer does not have research operations in Kyiv and adds: "Regarding our clinical trials in Ukraine - In the interests of patient safety, we made the necessary decision when the conflict began in 2022 to pause the recruitment of new participants to clinical trial programs. At the same time, we have focused on maintaining continuity of care for those patients who are actively participating in ongoing multi-year trials." 

The Ukrainian fact-checker Stop Fake also contacted the European office of Pfizer, which denied anyone named Anna Sakhno works at the company and reaffirmed that no research is currently being conducted in the Kyiv branch. It added the U.S. National Library of Medicine, which includes a searchable library of clinical trials from around the world, does not include any references to ongoing research in Ukraine.

Logically Facts has found no evidence of a vaccine called C6160b elsewhere. 

"The Chicago Chronicle" was a newspaper founded in 1895 that ceased publishing in May 1907 due to financial difficulties. The webpage in the post is currently suspended. Logically Facts conducted an archive search, which shows that it was only active in January and February 2024. No editor is listed in the archived version, and the "About us" section is empty. 

Similar claims have also been made by Pravda-en, recently named as part of a major Russian disinformation campaign to justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine. According to the website Computing, it is hosted on a server in Russia.

The claim links to Russian disinformation narratives of bio laboratories in Ukraine. This includes claims about U.S. military experiments on humans in Ukraine and medical companies Pfizer and Moderna being involved in U.S. "military-biological programs."

However, no foreign laboratories exist in Ukraine. Laboratories were established under a 2005 treaty between Ukraine and the U.S. to prevent the spread of technologies, pathogens, and knowledge that may be used to develop biological weapons. According to Vox Ukraine, the publicly available agreement does not mention "military-biological programs." The laboratories are financed by Ukraine and subject to the Ukrainian Ministry of Health.

Furthermore, the claim links to misinformation narratives of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccines having a high mortality rate. Logically Facts has previously fact-checked various similar claims about vaccine deaths and found them false.

The verdict 

The only source for the claim is a video by a person calling herself Anna Sakhno. There is no evidence anyone with this name has ever worked for Pfizer. Pfizer does not conduct research in Ukraine. Therefore, we have marked this claim as false.