The Ukrainian police chief has accused Russia of recruiting underage Ukrainian girls to kill Ukrainian soldiers, following the arrest of a 17-year-old girl suspected of killing a soldier on the orders of a Russian operative.
In an interview published today by Ukrainian media outlet Cenzor.NET, National Police Chief Ivan Vigivsky said that this year there have been six cases of contract killings arranged via the Telegram app, one of which was prevented.
"We are talking about planned murders organized by the special services of the aggressor state and carried out by Ukrainian citizens," he said.
Russia's FSB security service was not immediately available for comment. Russian security services accuse Kiev of recruiting Russians for bombings in Russia, while Ukraine's military intelligence service has claimed responsibility for the assassinations of several senior Russian officers since the start of the invasion of Moscow in 2022.
Vigivsky said Russian recruiters find young women through messaging platforms, promising them easy money and coordinating their actions remotely.
The young women were instructed to look for Ukrainian soldiers on dating sites, and received money from their employers to rent apartments where they would meet them, Vigivsky said.
He said they were told where to get methadone, a synthetic opioid used as a painkiller and which can be fatal in large doses, to put in the victims' drinks.
Ukraine's security service said more than 1.100 Ukrainians had been charged with arson, terrorism or sabotage, or treason against their country during the war.
Police in the western Zhytomyr region last week detained a 17-year-old girl after poisoning a soldier and said she had communicated via Telegram with a man believed to be an agent of Russian security services.
Police said the girl received a package containing a crystalline substance that investigators suspect is methadone.
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