Eighteen Ukrainian diplomatic missions in 12 countries have received bloody packages in what Ukraine has described as a “campaign of terror and intimidation”. Oleh Nikolenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s foreign ministry, said the packages were sent simultaneously from a European country, which he could not disclose while the investigation was ongoing.
On Friday, Ukraine said 17 embassies had been attacked, indicating another surrendered on Saturday.
An employee of the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid was injured on Wednesday by a letter bomb addressed to the Ukrainian ambassador to Spain.
Four more letter bombs were sent to addresses in Spain on Wednesday, including to a Spanish arms manufacturer that has produced rockets donated to Ukraine, as well as Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and the US embassy in Madrid.
In an interview with CNN on Friday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba described the aftermath of the Madrid attack as “weirdest” and “even sick.”
He said that after Wednesday, packages soaked in liquid with a characteristic smell and containing animal eyes began arriving at several Ukrainian diplomatic missions.
“It’s probably a cow’s eye in one case and a pig’s eye in another,” Kuleba said.
Asked who he thought was behind the packages, Kuleba said he was “tempted to name Russia” as it benefits from sowing fear among Ukrainian diplomats. But he added that it could also be someone sympathetic to Russia, so he would await the findings of the ongoing investigations.
The Russian embassy in Madrid tweeted on Thursday that any terrorist attack on diplomatic missions was “totally condemnable”.
On Friday afternoon, Ukraine’s foreign ministry said the packages had been delivered to the Ukrainian embassies in Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Croatia and Italy, the consulates general in Naples and Krakow and the consulate in Brno in the Czech Republic.
He later announced that a similar package had also been delivered to the embassy in Madrid and that investigators were on the scene. Nikolenko posted a picture of the garden of the embassy in Madrid, where a Spanish police officer could be seen patrolling with a dog.
In addition to the packages, the residence of Ukraine’s ambassador to the Vatican was smeared with what Ukraine suspects may have been animal excrement. “The door of the apartment and the stairs and the walls of the entrance were smeared with a foul substance with an unpleasant smell,” said Ukraine’s Vatican ambassador Andriy Yurash.
“It is difficult to fully explain why and what is the reason for this terrible message, but it is certainly a systematic trend, a systematic attack on Ukrainian missions across Europe,” he said.
A hoax bomb threat was received about the Ukrainian Embassy in Kazakhstan, and the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington received a letter containing an article critical of Ukraine.
Ukraine has asked its embassies to increase security and asked host countries for help.