Ukrainian police said Friday they had arrested a 17-year-old girl suspected of helping Russian security services poison Ukrainian soldiers and that two of them were dead.
Ukraine and Russia have accused each other throughout their war since 2022 of recruiting minors for acts of sabotage, including poisoning.
The girl, who has not been named, is suspected of packaging deadly drugs and sending them to Ukrainian soldiers whom she contacted via Telegram, police said in a statement.
She was arrested by police in Zhytomyr, west of kyiv, after allegedly following the instructions of a Russian agent in exchange for at least 5,000 hryvnias ($111), they said.
After receiving packages containing “free medicine,” the soldiers were “ordered to film them,” according to the statement.
“The recipients did not know that the capsules contained a lethal dose of methadone,” the statement said, adding that “two soldiers died of poisoning in the Zhytomyr region.”
Police said they identified other recipients of the packages, which “prevented four further murders” across the country.
“The young woman has been informed that she is suspected of aiding and abetting the premeditated murder of two people as part of a previous conspiracy,” the police statement said.
She was also suspected of having “transported drugs and psychotropic substances for the purpose of distribution,” the statement said, adding that she faced up to 15 years in prison if convicted.
Police warned that Russia was seeking to “kill our people and destabilize the situation inside the country.”
“Do not accept medications or other substances, as well as food or drinks of questionable origin, from people you do not know well,” police warned.
Since the beginning of The full-scale invasion of Russia as of February 2022, Ukrainian authorities say they have opened thousands of investigations for collaboration with the enemy and frequently arrest individuals accused of working for Moscow.
In 2023, Ukraine accuses Russia of poisoning Marianna Boudanovathe wife of Kyrylo Budanov, then head of Ukrainian military intelligence and now presidential advisor. Besides Budanova, several members of Ukraine’s military intelligence service (known by its local acronym GUR) were also diagnosed with the same poisoning.
Also in 2023, the Paris prosecutor’s office opened an investigation into suspected poisoning of a Russian journalist who made headlines by raising an anti-war slogan against Ukraine on state television.
In an interview with the British tabloid The Sun, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed to have survived “no less” five or six assassination attempts since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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