Ukraine has been accused of plotting to poison a high-ranking Russian officer with “beer laced with a British-supplied chemical warfare agent”. Vladimir Putin‘s Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed to have thwarted an assassination attempt which would have led to an “agonising death within 20 minutes”. The bizarre case involved a senior member of Russia‘s armed forces falling for a glamorous woman he met on a dating app, who sent him films from her gym workouts and promised gifts of bottles of beer.
The FSB alleged that the Yorkshire-brewed India Ale and Imperial Stout was spiked with colchicine and tert-butyl bicyclophosphate, described as “an analogue of the combat nerve agent VX, banned by the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention [and] of British manufacture”. The Russian security agency did not diclose the identity of the high-ranking military target, nor any evidence of a British link to the operation it claimed was staged by Ukrainian secret services.
Footage showed the arrest of a man from the Russian-occupied Donetsk region who allegedly agreed to collect the beer – delivered by a quadcopter – and deliver it to the intended target for payment.
The “senior officer”, who appeared in the FSB clip with his face blurred, said: “I met a girl on an online dating app … She introduced herself as Polina and said she lived in Donetsk, but at the time of our conversation, she was temporarily in Mariupol due to the illness of a close relative.
“She repeatedly sent me photos and videos from the gym, all with roughly the same content. After a few months of our conversation, she said she wanted to give me a gift, which she would deliver through a friend.
“A few days later, an unknown person called me and said they had a gift from Polina. I then left the house, met this person, and they handed me a package.
“Officers from the FSB arrived and detained thge person. They ordered me to carefully place the package on the ground, after which they explained that the package contained beer laced with a chemical warfare agent intended for my elimination.”
The anonymous man said he was told “officers from the Ukrainian special services were hiding behind Polina’s account”.
The detainee who said he had been offered money to collect the gift said he was instructed to deliver two packages to an address for a fee of $5,000 (£3,800). “In essence, I turned out to be expendable for the Ukrainian secret services,” he added.
The unsupported claim of British involvement comes amid heightened tension between Moscow and London, with the former singling the latter out as its number one enemy in the West.
It also follows sightings of a Russian spy ship north of Scotland which used lasers to disrupt RAF pilots tracking its activity near UK waters this week. Defence Secretary John Healey said the ship would remain under close monitoring with “military options ready” should it change course.
