“I’m not aware of any historical evidence linking this institute to the Russian bioweapons programme. Russia has at least three known military facilities that do research on #biologicalweapons so those would be where the programme is mostly located.
Conflating this accident with #Russian bioweapons research activities is not helpful because this was a public-health lab where this accident happened. The idea that all public-health labs are secretly working on #bioweapons is just nonsense.
Separately, Russia inherited the world’s largest bioweapons programme when the Soviet Union fell apart, and for the last 10 years or so, they have been modernizing that programme.”
#Nature / #MaxKozlov / #GregoryKoblentz / #BioSecurity / #GeorgeMasonUniversity / #Etiology <https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-03215-8> (paywall)