Six Ukrainian embassies receives animal eye kits
Six Ukrainian embassies in Europe have received packages containing animal eyes. The...
Ukraine’s foreign minister has charged Russia with being behind a string of more than a dozen letters that were delivered to Ukrainian embassies throughout the world and contained explosives or animal parts.
“This campaign is aimed at sowing fear,” Dmytro Kuleba told in an exclusive interview in Kyiv on Friday.
When asked who he thought was behind the letters, Kuleba told media, “I feel tempted to say, to name Russia straight away, because first of all you have to answer the question, who benefits?
“Maybe this terror response is the Russian answer to the diplomatic horror that we created for Russia on the international arena, and this is how they try to fight back while they are losing the real diplomatic battles one after another.”
He said he thought that Russia was either directly responsible, or someone “who sympathizes [with] the Russian cause and tries to spread fear.”
“The conclusion will be made by investigators, but I think these two versions make most of the sense.”
In response to Kuleba’s assertion, Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian foreign ministry, offered media one word: “psycho.”
According to Kuleba, there have been 17 instances of embassies receiving either letter bombs, fake bomb letters, or letters that contained animal parts like cow and pig eyeballs.
“It started with an explosion at the embassy of Ukraine in Spain,” Kuleba said. “But what followed this explosion was more weird, and I would even say sick.”
Kuleba was making reference to an explosion that happened on Wednesday at the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid, injuring a worker who was handling a letter for the ambassador of that nation to Spain. Spanish officials confirmed on Thursday that letter bombs were also sent last week to the US embassy and the country’s prime minister.
Suspicious packages have also been delivered to Kiev’s embassies in Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Croatia, Italy, and Austria, as well as the general consulates in Naples and Krakow. Oleh Nikolenko, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, posted on Facebook on Friday.
The packages were “soaked in a liquid of a characteristic color and had a corresponding smell,” he said. “We are examining the meaning of this message.”
Following the influx of suspicious mail, Ukraine has increased security at all of its diplomatic missions abroad.
After receiving a suspicious package containing animal tissue on Friday, the Ukrainian Consulate in Brno, a city in the southeast of the Czech Republic, was briefly evacuated, Czech police added in a tweet on Friday.
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