Moscow’s Secrecy About a Suspected Plague Case Follows a Pattern From the Soviet Era
The WHO wants Russia to explain the cause after unconfirmed reports linked the death to pneumonic plague and a second worker was reported ill.
- Rospotrebnadzor told the World Health Organization that no plague cases exist in Siberia, following a lab worker's death last week. The WHO urged Moscow to provide more information regarding the cause of the worker's fatal pneumonia.
- This incident reflects a long-standing culture of secrecy in Moscow, where authorities frequently manage official narratives to conceal the scale of emergencies from industrial accidents to infectious disease outbreaks, often covering up the truth for years.
- Historical cases include the 1979 Sverdlovsk anthrax leak, where Soviet authorities blamed contaminated meat, and the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, where officials delayed evacuation orders for 36 hours before warning the public.
- During the COVID-19 pandemic, independent outlets questioned official Russian death tolls, with Rosstat reporting 681,100 virus-linked deaths versus government figures of 338,091. Authorities denied claims of widespread shortages and infection control failures.
- Judy Twigg, professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University, said the system produces contradiction instead of unified accounts because "the system can silence, but its not competent enough to coordinate." This fuels mistrust in official health data.
29 Articles
29 Articles
A young researcher from the Irkutsk Institute of Pest Control Research died in the early days of October after she had had symptoms that coincided with pneumonia. Russian authorities deny any outbreak, but isolated hundreds of people and tested thousands. The World Health Organization says Moscow has to provide more data
The Russian authorities avoid any risk of epidemics after the death of a young woman in Siberia, possibly as a result of a pulmonary plague. However, the WHO considers that the information made available by the Kremlin is not sufficientThe death last week in Siberia of a laboratory working on the plague has given rise to havoc at the international level. And because: this disease, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, is sadly famous for havi…
Moscow's secrecy about a suspected plague case follows a pattern
The Kremlin has long maintained a culture of secrecy when it comes to controlling public information, especially involving accidents — from industrial disasters to health emergencies. The suspicious death last week of a worker at a research
What happened in Siberia? The fuzzy reigns around the death of the 28-year-old laboratory, Daria Chipilova, who worked at the Institut de recherche sur la
Winnipeg Free Press
Moscow’s secrecy about a suspected plague case follows a pattern from the Soviet era
The Kremlin has long maintained a culture of secrecy when it comes to controlling public information, especially involving accidents -- from industrial disasters to health emergencies.
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