FEARS are growing that Vladimir Putin is hiding the truth about a suspected plague lab leak as experts warn the disease may have been weaponised.
Daria Shipilova, 28, fell ill after accidentally dropping and breaking a test tube containing plague bacteria at a research institute, reports say.
She is said to have been working with Yersinia pestis – the bacterium behind plague and the medieval Black Death.
Daria become unwell during a research expedition in Buryatia, on Russia’s eastern frontier with Mongolia, to study plague-infested squirrels before being placed on a ventilator on September 29.
The young scientist later died in hospital from what Russian healthofficials described only as “pneumonia of unknown aetiology”.
Her sudden death sparked the immediate quarantine of 189 people who had been in contact with her at the lab in Shelekhov – and the World Health Organisation has asked for information from Russia.
Moscow flatly denies there was ever a laboratory accident.
Russian officials insist extensive testing found no microorganism linked to Daria’s work and maintain there is no plague outbreak.
But the huge containment operation and scramble to lockdown hospitals has sparked fears of a wider cover-up – and raised questions about what was really going on inside the Siberian lab.
Speaking to Sam Homewood in The Sun’s new studio, chemical and biological weapons expert Hamish de Bretton-Gordon warned: “It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that they have an active biological weapons program.”
He added: “Because regulation is so poor, particularly in Russia, some of the scientists and some of these laboratories can possibly be used for really malign and malicious and dangerous activities.
“We now know there is a potential for some sort of plague-type pathogen to be travelling around.”
The expert questioned why a vaccine didn’t save Daria – particularly when it is usual practice for laboratory workers to be vaccinated against the diseases they work with.
It suggests Daria was working with a new strain of the plague that did not have a vaccine.
Professor Simon Clarke, head of biomedical sciences at the University of Reading, warned that plague bacterium Yersinia pestis could potentially be weaponised.
He told The Sun: “This pathogen does have potential to be used as a bioweapon. It is no secret that could be something they were working on.
“There is speculation from a bioweapons perspective that antibiotic-resistant versions of the bacteria, Yersinia pestis, may have been developed in order to make them more difficult to treat.”
He added: “Under Putin, Russia has revived and increased investment in its illegal biological weapons program, at least at three military biological laboratories in Sergiyev Posad, Kirov, and Yekaterinburg.”
Now, the dramatic Kremlin response has caused a growing international alarm with experts warning the UK should be on high alert.
Dr Andrew Weber, who has been inside anti-plague laboratories across the former Soviet Union, said UK health chiefs should consider screening passengers while the Kremlin remains tight-lipped over exactly what killed Daria.
The former US Department of Defence worker told The Sun: “If I were a public health authority in London, I would be monitoring flights and passengers coming from the region and screening them at the airport.”
Donald Trump has now offered to help Russia tackle the crisis as Washington monitors the mysterious death.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington was “watching and monitoring it closely”, warning such an outbreak “could quickly spread”.
Hamish, meanwhile, drew a chilling comparison with the pandemic that brought the world to a standstill.
He said: “Covid was a very transmissible but a very low potency pathogen. Covid killed less than one per cent of people infected.
“Now plague is something quite different. It has a mortality rate between 50 per cent and 100 per cent untreated.”
The warnings come as a wall of Kremlin secrecy surrounds exactly what happened to Daria inside the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute.
She died on October 2 from what officials described as “pneumonia of unknown aetiology”.
But Moscow’s huge response has fuelled questions over why such drastic precautions were needed.Almost 200 people linked to Daria have been placed under observation, while dozens of her colleagues have been confined inside the institute, according to reports.
Hospitals have faced quarantine measures, events have been axed and workers at a giant aluminium plant ordered to wear masks.
Neighbouring countries have also tightened precautions amid fears over the mystery illness.
Hamish said the secretive response bore the hallmarks of an old Soviet playbook.
He said: “This is classic Russian or Soviet-type doctrine when a disaster happens to completely close down the networks.
And he questioned Moscow’s official explanation.
He said: “If it was pneumonia, we wouldn’t be seeing all the activity by military personnel in protective equipment.”
Another puzzle, he said, was how a scientist working inside a specialist plague facility could have died if exposed to an ordinary strain of the treatable disease.
“And secondly, the laboratory presumably would be full of medical countermeasures, ostensibly antibiotics. Plague is generally very treatable.
“Maybe the plague that was being worked on in this lab was different to bubonic plague, the Black Death, or pneumonic plague that we’re seeing.
“And the vaccines and the medical countermeasures have not been able to prevent this girl from being killed by it.”
He warned that rapidly advancing technology has transformed scientists’ ability to manipulate dangerous pathogens.
“AI is incredibly good at helping people particularly manipulate the genome and do what we call gain-of-function activities on pathogens to make them more dangerous,” he said.
Adding to the intrigue, Russia’s chief state sanitary doctor Anna Popova flew some 2,600 miles from Moscow to Irkutsk to oversee the response to a “particularly dangerous infection”.
Locals have meanwhile described hospitals being sealed and institute workers forced to sleep on floors and chairs while isolated.
One resident said: “The more they reassure us, the more frightening it gets.”
Russian authorities continue to insist the epidemiological situation is stable and there is no evidence of a plague outbreak.
But Hamish said Moscow’s apparent reluctance to seek international assistance only deepened concern.
He said: “The fact that it’s happening in isolation, the fact that we’re all starting to talk about it, is a real concern.
“And the fact that the Russians are trying to ignore it and not asking for international help again, is a bit of a concern.”
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