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Ukraine says embassy 'bloody packages' came from Germany

December 7, 2022

The Ukrainian foreign minister says grizzly packages that arrived at Kyiv's diplomatic missions across Europe seem to have been mailed from a car dealership in Germany.

https://p.dw.com/p/4KcH8
A National Police officer with a dog in the vicinity of the Ukrainian embassy after it was cordoned off
Image: Carlos Lujan/Europa Press/abaca/picture alliance

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Wednesday said his country's diplomatic missions have recently received 31 suspicious or threatening packages — and that the parcels appear to have been sent from Germany.

Ukraine said last week that "bloody packages" containing animal eyes, covered in a pungent liquid, had been sent to a significant number of its missions in Europe. 

What do we know so far?

Kuleba said the sender address for each of the envelopes was the same in each case — a Tesla car dealership in the German town of Sindelfingen in the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg.

"Usually, the shipment was made from post offices that were not equipped with video surveillance systems," Kuleba wrote.

"Criminals also took measures not to leave traces of their DNA on the packages. This, in particular, indicates the professional level of implementation."

Kuleba said the most recently received packages, in the past two days, had been at embassies in Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Denmark, as well as the Ukrainian consulate in the northern Polish city of Gdansk.

"In total, we already have 31 cases in 15 countries: Austria (1), the Vatican (1), Denmark (1), Spain (5), Italy (4), Kazakhstan (1), the Netherlands (1), Poland (6), Portugal (2), Romania (2), the US (1), Hungary (2), France (1), Croatia (1), Czech Republic (2)," Kuleba wrote on Facebook.

The foreign minister said he was working with counterparts in other countries in relation to investigations amid suspicions the incidents are linked to Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Ukraine, Russia cagy about war casualties

Kuleba said Ukrainian embassies and consulates had been "operating under heightened security measures" for the past week, with help from pyrotechnicians and forensic experts.

"I don't remember any instance in history that so many embassies and consulates of one country have been subjected to such mass attacks in such a short period of time," Kuleba wrote.

"But no matter how hard the enemies try to intimidate Ukrainian diplomacy, they will not succeed. We will continue to work for victory."

The bloody packages started to arrive soon after a letter bomb detonated at Ukraine's embassy in Spain with police defusing other envelopes sent to, among others, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sachez.

rc/aw (Reuters, AFP)