A reported possible plague outbreak at a Russian laboratory has renewed questions about activities inside the remote Siberian facility, particularly given Russia’s documented history of biological-weapons research.
The Anti-Plague Research Institute in Irkutsk sits roughly 2,500 miles east of Moscow, near the Mongolian border. It is one of more than 80 infectious-disease laboratories built across the Soviet Union to study dangerous pathogens.
Although the facilities were officially presented as centers for public health and defensive research, the Soviet Union’s plague laboratories had close ties to its offensive biological-weapons program, according to research by Raymond A. Zilinskas.
During the Soviet era, the Irkutsk facility served as a key repository for wild, highly virulent strains of plague, anthrax and other pathogens collected from animals throughout East Asia and Siberia.
Zilinskas found that many of the laboratories also supplied samples to the Soviet military for use in biological-weapons research.
According to the Kremlin, the Irkutsk laboratory has been used for defensive research and vaccine development.
However, a U.S. State Department report issued in April 2025 concluded that “Russia maintains an offensive biological warfare program and is in violation of its obligations” under the Biological Weapons Convention, Radio Free Europe reported.
The report comes years after Moscow promoted the conspiracy theory that Ukraine operated biological-weapons laboratories, allegedly with tacit or direct support from the United States.
Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican and senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, addressed those longstanding allegations in a post on X on Sunday.
“I remember hearing from anti-Ukraine voices about their so-called bio labs. It was Russian disinformation ops at their best,” Bacon wrote.
“But in reality, it is Russia with the biolabs,” he added.
Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo also raised concerns on Monday, drawing a direct comparison with the COVID-19 outbreak seven years earlier in Wuhan, China, about 1,500 miles to the south.
“The news of a suspected ‘plague’ outbreak from Russia should be treated with the utmost seriousness, especially considering the source,” Pompeo wrote on X.
“COVID showed us how the lies and obstruction of authoritarian governments seeking to cover their tracks can turn a containable outbreak into a global pandemic.”
Over the weekend, 28-year-old laboratory technician Daria Shipilova died days after reportedly breaking a test tube containing pneumonic plague while working at the Siberian facility.
Russia has repeatedly denied producing biological weapons at its disease laboratories, insisting that the facilities are focused on developing defenses against deadly pathogens and plague outbreaks.
Nearly 200 people who had contact with Shipilova have been placed under quarantine. As many as five hospitals in the area are also believed to have been put on lockdown.
As of Monday, no additional positive cases of pneumonic plague had been reported.
During the Soviet period, research centers such as Irkutsk gathered thousands of wild pathogen strains from a range of ecological regions. Experts trained at anti-plague institutes were also frequently recruited into biological-weapons programs, according to Zilinskas’ research.
After the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, many anti-plague laboratories across the former Soviet republics fell into dangerous disrepair as funding dried up. Over the following two decades, U.S.-backed initiatives worked with those countries to secure pathogen collections and improve laboratory biosafety.
The plague is commonly spread by fleas — but contact with infected wild animals is the most common way the disease is transmitted to humans in the 21st century.
Pneumonic plague, which is reportedly the variant in Siberia, can also spread person-to-person by particles in coughs from infected people or contact with bodily fluids.
The plague was the source of the Black Death in the 14th century, which killed up to 60% of the entire population of Europe.
It comes as the Trump administration said on Monday it is closely monitoring the situation in Russia.
A State Department spokesman urged Russian authorities “to share accurate information quickly and openly,” in a statement on Monday.
With Post wires.
