BREAKING: A 28-year-old technician at Russia’s Irkutsk anti-plague institute is dead.
Officials say “pneumonia of unknown origin.” Local officials and relatives say plague, a broken vial, and staff locked inside the building.
WHO has long warned that pneumonic plague spreads person to person and, untreated, can trigger a severe epidemic.
Moscow says the risk is nothing. Washington says it is watching.
Irkutsk sits on the Siberian plague belt that runs into Mongolia and China. Beijing has not said a word.
Meanwhile Russia is drafting 120,000 men this fall and squeezing anyone aged 18–30 who will not register.
Military-age men have been slipping toward the Chinese border for years to avoid the call-up. A lab death in Siberia is a bad week to be young, male, and still inside Russia.