Russian Plague Lab Reportedly Received Funding From RFK Jr.’s HHS

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. allegedly oversaw the allocation of more than $800,000 in taxpayer funding to a research project connected to a Siberian institution linked to the lab at the center of a suspected Russian plague outbreak.

The death last week of a worker at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute sparked international concern. Reports have since claimed that at least one additional person has died, prompting fresh scrutiny of the Siberian facility.

In 2025 and 2026, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign partnered with Russia’s state-run Institute of Cytology and Genetics. That institute has previously collaborated with the Irkutsk facility now facing questions.

White Coat Waste, a bipartisan government watchdog that focuses largely on animal testing, said the National Institutes of Health—overseen by Kennedy through the Department of Health and Human Services—awarded the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign nearly $800,000 for the research in 2025 and 2026.

NIH records show payments of $389,943 in July 2025 and $389,746 in September 2026. The project examined social behavior in foxes raised at a Siberian breeding facility.

White Coat Waste said it became aware of the project because the animals were killed before samples were sent to the university for additional analysis.

The watchdog group argued that Kennedy should not have supported the research, citing a 2022 directive from President Biden that halted funding for animal testing in Russia following the outbreak of war in Ukraine.

Our News Outlet has contacted the NIH and the Department of Health and Human Services for comment.

Concern escalated last week after Darya Shipilova, 28, a worker at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute in Siberia, reportedly told medical staff that she had accidentally broken a test tube containing live bacteria.

Russian officials said Shipilova died from “unidentified pneumonia.” They also reported evidence that some of her colleagues had COVID-19 and the common cold.

However, other reports have alleged that she contracted pneumonic plague, an infection caused by the bacterium associated with the “Black Death,” which killed millions across Europe during the Middle Ages.

Hundreds of people who had contact with Shipilova, along with five hospitals—including a maternity unit—were placed under quarantine. She was hospitalized and died from the infection on October 2.

Local media have since reported that a second person in the Irkutsk region also died from the plague.

Meanwhile, reports about the initial plague case have reportedly vanished from Russian media outlets, including a story published by Moscow-based Channel 5.

The independent Russian outlet The Insider reported on October 2 that federal broadcaster REN TV had also removed all five of its reports about the alleged plague cases in the Irkutsk region.

Countries bordering Russia, including Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, have nonetheless tightened health screening and border controls in response to the reports.

The plague is a serious infection caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis that can cause swollen lymph nodes, particularly at the groin, armpit and neck, coughing up blood and bleeding under the skin.

Pneumonic plague is among the most severe forms of the disease that leaves patients bedridden within 24 hours after it attacks the lungs, causing them to fill with fluid and leaving someone struggling to breathe.

It is nearly always fatal unless someone is treated with antibiotics shortly after they have been infected. 

Anyone can catch the plague, scientists say, which is a severe infection for all age groups.

It can spread from person-to-person if an infected person coughs or sneezes, expelling tiny droplets containing the bacteria, which can then be breathed in by another person, causing an infection. 

The plague is endemic to Siberia, the location of the first known prehistoric human outbreak, as the bacterium that causes it is present among the small wild mammals in its vast wilderness and their fleas, which can also become infected and transmit the bacteria. 

Cases are occasionally reported in the region, although it is generally rare for Russians to fall ill. 

But in July, Mongolia’s National Center for Zoonotic Diseases (NCZD) confirmed a human plague case in Khovd province in the western part of the country. The center warned that 17 out of 21 provinces in the country were classified as plague-risk areas.

In the US, the CDC says that about seven cases of the plague are recorded every year, mostly in northern New Mexico and Arizona. 

These are triggered because the bacteria that causes the disease is present in the small wild mammals in the region. 

More than 80 percent of human cases in the US are triggered when the fleas on these animals bite them, becoming infected, and then bite a human, passing on the bacteria.

Globally, there are about 1,000 to 2,000 plague cases every year.

Many of these are in Africa, particularly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Madagascar, which records infections every year. 

It isn’t clear how many die from the disease, but with the bubonic plague, the most common type, caused by flea bites and which triggers swollen lymph nodes, about 30 to 60 percent of patients die if they are not treated early. 

A top official with the World Health Organization said Wednesday it doesn´t know how Shipilova died and she urged Russia to provide more information about a case that prompted global concerns about suspected pneumonic plague.

Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO director of Epidemic and Pandemic Management, said the UN health agency doesn´t know what the ‘causative agent’ was behind her October 2 death.