Heightened security after ‘bloody animal eyes’ and bombs arrive in post

Ukraine says several of its European embassies have received “bloody” packages containing animal eyes, including its embassy in Madrid, which also received a letter bomb this week. Spanish police cordoned off the embassy yesterday and searched the area with sniffer dogs.

The packages, soaked in a liquid with a distinctive colour and smell, have also been sent to embassies in Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Croatia and Italy, to general consulates in Naples and Kraków, and to the consulate in Brno in the Czech Republic, said Ukraine’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Oleg Nikolenko.

“We are studying the meaning,” he said on Facebook, adding that the foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has ordered heightened security at all the embassies and consulates concerned.

Ukrainian officials also said the entrance of the ambassador’s residence in the Vatican had been vandalised and a bogus bomb threat had been issued regarding its embassy in Kazakhstan.

Six letter bombs were sent to addresses in Spain in the past week, said the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, including the US embassy in Madrid, and security had been stepped up.

An employee at the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid was injured on Tuesday after opening a package addressed to the ambassador. He opened the parcel, which had arrived by normal mail, in the embassy garden because it contained a small box.

“After opening the box and hearing a click that followed, he tossed it and then heard the explosion,” the ambassador, Serhii Pohoreltsev, told Ukraine’s European Pravda news site. “Despite not holding the box at the time of the explosion, the commandant hurt his hands and received a concussion.” Spanish police later said a similar package had been sent to a Spanish arms company that manufactures rocket launchers that Spain has donated to Kyiv, and they believed the two incidents were linked.

Up to 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia invaded in February, according to Kyiv’s presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak, far below estimates of Ukrainian casualties from western leaders.

At certain points in the war, Ukraine said that between 100 and 200 of its troops were dying each day on the battlefield, making Podolyak’s estimate seem conservative.

Speaking to Ukraine’s 24 Kanal, Podolyak quoted official figures from Ukraine’s general staff. He said Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, would make the total public “when the right moment comes”.

Ukraine has been tight-lipped about the number of its military dead and wounded, citing its worry that revealing the total would give Russia a military advantage. The first official total was announced in August when Ukraine’s army chief, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, said 9,000 had died. The total number of injured has not been stated.