Glenn Corn, a former CIA officer, told Fox News Digital that Russia’s decades-long history of deception makes it difficult to trust the Kremlin’s account of a possible disease outbreak following the death of a 28-year-old researcher at a facility containing dangerous pathogens.Darya Shipilova, who worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East, got sick near the end of September.After unconfirmed reports that Shipilova died from pneumonic plague were shared far and wide on social media, Russian authorities pushed back, saying she died on Oct.2 from "pneumonia of unknown etiology" and that testing found no evidence she had been infected with a pathogen from her lab.Yet the Russian government’s past messaging around major crises has left Corn and others wary of its official account.Glenn Corn attends the discussion organized by the Kyiv Security Forum in Kyiv, Ukraine, on April 3, 2026.
(Yuliia Ovsiannikova/ Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images)RUSSIAN RESEARCHER'S MYSTERY DEATH COULD BE ‘FAR WORSE’ THAN THE PLAGUE, FORMER SENIOR TRUMP OFFICIAL WARNS"This is what the challenge is, because they have the history of the 'boy who cried wolf syndrome.' They have this history of being deceitful.It's very hard to believe what they're saying," Corn said.Corn, who is fluent in Russian and spent more than 20 years overseas during his intelligence career, gave several examples of elaborate Russian coverups, including the 1979 anthrax outbreak that killed at least 64 people in the Soviet city of Sverdlovsk, now called Yekaterinburg.For years, the Soviet Union claimed that the deaths were caused by intestinal anthrax from tainted meat, according to PBS Frontline.
It wasn't until 1992 that President Boris Yeltsin finally admitted the illnesses were the result of military activity at a nearby biological weapons facility.This dedication to deception, Corn said, remains a feature of the current government under President Vladimir P...