On Monday, Russia’s consumer watchdog Rospotrebnadzor confirmed the country’s first case of the Zika virus, Reuters reports. The Moscow resident began experiencing fever and rashes a few days after returning from her vacation in the Dominican Republic.

According to a city press agency, she’s feeling better, doesn’t pose a risk to the public and will be released home in a few days.

Russia is not considered to be at direct risk for infection. There are no Aedes mosquitoes there, except for some in tropical Sochi, but as Meduza reminds us, none of them have been reported to be carrying the virus... Yet?!!!

Following the news, Gennadiy Onishchenko, former Chief Sanitary Inspector of Russia, now serving as an aide to Prime Minister Medvedev, speculated to BBC Russia that “Americans” could be intentionally infecting mosquitos with the Zika virus in a lab in Tbilisi, Georgia.

I am worried about the Abkhazian shores, where this mosquito is registered. This worries me because within a hundred kilometers of this mosquito’s habitat, so very close to our borders, there is a US military microbiological laboratory.

And I think that even you won’t be persuaded by the allegations that today those American military microbiologists have suddenly turned into humanitarians, only concerned with protecting Georgian children from measles. That’s not why the Pentagon builds military biolabs.

He concluded that it is “increasingly likely” that the mosquitos were “deliberately contaminated.”

Onishchenko served as head of Russia’s Federal Service for Health and Consumer Rights (Rospotrebnadzor) until he was fired in 2013, but not before repeatedly warning the nation about the dangers of foreign food and protesting.

He continues with what The Moscow Times calls his “creative approach to medical advice.” Last summer, he argued in support of Russia’s proposed restrictions on condom imports, which he said would make citizens “more disciplined.”

Photo via AP Images. Contact the author of this post at marina.galperina@gawker.com.