I struggled to find this story on any outlet that isn’t a tabloid, an official-sounding never-heard-before bumfucknowhere gazette or a repeater like msn.
The original article seems to be from the guardian (quoted as such by the university itself) in a far less sensationalist way. It was written so long ago that people still thought Russia was a superpower, unilad decided to sensationalise it and publish it as fresh news one and a half years later.
The story is worrying don’t get me wrong, but this is just doom porn.