Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has urged the country's authorities to close the border with Russia and ban Russian citizens from entering. He outlined his position on Facebook from custody, commenting on reports regarding the death of an employee at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute.

Saakashvili stated that the case might involve a particularly dangerous form of plague transmitted via airborne droplets.

"You 'Kotsi' [representatives of the ruling 'Georgian Dream' party], for once, stop thinking about making money or how to crawl up the Russians' asses—at least spare your own lives," he wrote.

His statement was prompted by reports of the death of Daria Shipilova, a 28-year-old laboratory technician at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute. She died on October 2 in a hospital in the city of Shelekhov following a severe lung illness. Media reports suggested she might have been infected after accidentally damaging a test tube containing the plague pathogen.

Russia’s consumer watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, has not confirmed this theory. According to the agency, the cause of death was pneumonia of unknown etiology, and no microorganisms linked to her professional work were found in her biological samples. An inspection of the institute also revealed no accidents involving pathogenic microorganisms.

Several countries neighboring Russia stepped up sanitary measures following reports of the incident. On October 5, Kazakhstan announced it was continuously monitoring the situation and strengthening sanitary and quarantine controls at border crossings; no suspected cases of highly dangerous infections had been detected at that time. Kyrgyzstan has also switched sanitary-quarantine checkpoints to an enhanced mode of operation, with controls extending to people, vehicles, and cargo crossing the border.