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Ukrainian embassies receive packages containing animal eyes: officials

02.12.2022 15:00
Ukrainian embassies and consulates in several countries, including Poland, have been sent packages containing animal eyes, the foreign ministry in Kyiv said on Friday. 
Police agents and firefighters seen at the entrance to the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid, Spain, November 30, 2022.
Police agents and firefighters seen at the entrance to the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid, Spain, November 30, 2022.Photo: EPA/Chema Moya

The packages were soaked in a liquid and had a distinctive colour and smell, the Reuters news agency reported.

They were sent to Ukraine's embassies in Poland, Hungary, the Netherlands, Croatia and Italy, and to the country's consulates in Poland’s Kraków, Italy's Naples and the Czech Republic's Brno, the spokesperson for the Ukrainian foreign ministry, Oleg Nikolenko, said, as cited by Polish state news agency PAP. 

Nikolenko added that the parcels were soaked in blood and contained animal eyes, PAP reported. 

"We are studying the meaning of this message," Nikolenko wrote in a statement posted on Facebook, adding that Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba had instructed all the embassies and consulates to be put under heightened security, according to Reuters.

The alert comes after six letter-bombs were sent to addresses in Spain in recent days, including to the Ukrainian and US embassies in Madrid and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, news outlets reported. 

Moreover, the entrance to the flat of Ukraine’s ambassador to the Vatican had been vandalised, Nikolenko said, while an embassy source in Rome said human faeces were left in front of the door, according to Reuters.  

The spokesman for Ukraine’s foreign ministry also said that the country’s embassy in Kazakhstan had received a bomb threat, which was subsequently not confirmed, while the embassy in the United States had been sent a letter containing an article that was critical of Ukraine.

Nikolenko said the letter, and most of the others, had been sent from one European country, without providing further details, Reuters reported. 

Friday is day 282 of Russia’s war on Ukraine. 

(pm/gs)

Source: PAP, Reuters, onet.pl