In 1992, Boris Yeltsin admitted the Soviets had a BW program. Months later, Frank Wisner — then Under Sec State — led a US delegation to Moscow to press Russia to come clean on its biological warfare program. Russia never did so.
What’s important in Wisner’s declassified speaking points (below) is the heavy emphasis on Russia’s plague weapons, including work on “genetic engineering and other techniques” & “to make plague bacteria resistant to antibiotics, and to make the agent more suitable for weaponization.”
The Irkusk institute is not mentioned by name, but rather indirectly as part of “the former USSR's anti-plague infrastructure” where agents were developed for biological warfare (p.4).
It is important that Russia release the details on what pathogen killed Dariya Shipilova, & whether offensive BW activities continue at the Irkutsk lab where she worked.
https://t.co/AcIsaozcMM