With Russian Stonewalling, U.S. Escalates Inquiry Into Plague Lab Death

The Trump administration has formally escalated its demand for information from Moscow after days of Russian stonewalling over the death of a 28-year-old laboratory worker at a Siberian institute dedicated to studying the plague, a State Department spokesperson confirmed Tuesday. The U.S. issued a diplomatic démarche, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said it was “incumbent upon Russia to obviously share more information with the world.”

The technician died last week at the Irkutsk Research Anti-Plague Institute in eastern Russia, where staff also study cholera, anthrax and brucellosis. The death immediately raised alarms within the administration, sparking a race to compile intelligence and plan for a potential public health response, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

But Russian officials have offered little cooperation, leaving federal agencies uncertain what broader risks the episode could pose and how to defend against them. “We have officially requested additional information from the Russian government,” a State Department spokesperson said. “We are also in official communication with other countries around the world to share information.”

U.S. officials first contacted the Russian government as early as last Friday, including outreach between the State Department’s health experts and the Russian Foreign Ministry. Rubio on Tuesday said the limited information sharing “will change in the next few hours and days,” but cautioned against speculation. “Maybe it’s bigger than we thought. We don’t know,” he said.

President Donald Trump told reporters outside the White House that he had a “call scheduled” to speak with Russian leader Vladimir Putin “very soon,” and added U.S. agencies would have more information to report “probably tomorrow.” Still, officials said cooperation so far has been minimal and the little information coming out of Russia has faced deep skepticism.

Central unresolved questions include whether the worker contracted pneumonic plague—a severe but treatable bacterial infection—or another unknown infectious disease, and whether the pathogen was modified through gain-of-function research. That distinction could dramatically alter the way the United States and other countries respond.

The Russian government has taken outsized steps locally: quarantining the hospital where the worker was treated, with nearly 200 people under observation, according to the mayor of the Shelekhovsky district and a regional news outlet. While Trump and Rubio publicly downplayed the immediate threat to Americans, emphasizing antibiotics exist for plague, officials described deep unease behind the scenes over the lack of insight.

The National Security Council and State Department have led the cross-government effort, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response also involved. U.S. officials have also backchanneled with the World Health Organization—despite earlier funding cuts—though WHO said it too has received little information from Russian authorities.

Lawrence Gostin, a global health law professor at Georgetown University, questioned whether the Kremlin can be trusted. “Clearly, on its face, the lab was conducting extremely high-risk research and using shoddy biosafety measures,” he said.

Health experts said pneumonic plague’s limited ability to spread quickly and the availability of antibiotics provide some comfort. But Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiology professor at Brown University, warned that U.S. and global response capabilities are depleted. “We are talking about a very depleted system. God forbid you layer another pathogen onto the already laborious and difficult work of going after measles,” she said. “That would be a nightmare.”