Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) says it prevented an assassination after stopping a high-ranking Russian officer from drinking beer allegedly delivered by a “girlfriend.”
The FSB reported that the beer was laced with a British-made analogue of the banned nerve agent VX and that, if consumed, it would cause an agonising death within about 20 minutes.
Authorities detained a resident of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) who was allegedly involved in the plot and arrested him before he could deliver the bottles.
According to the targeted officer, he met a woman using the name Polina on an online app and later continued their contact on Telegram. After months of messaging, she offered to send him a gift, to be delivered through a friend.
The man who arrived to deliver the packages was reportedly promised $5,000 by Ukraine’s Defense Ministry Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) to hand over two packages of the poisoned beer, the FSB said. The agency also alleges Polina was a fake account created by the GUR for the operation.
“Tests on the confiscated bottles established the beer contained a mixture of highly toxic poisons — colchicine and tert‑butyl bicyclophosphate (an analogue of the military‑grade nerve agent VX, banned by the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention) — which, when consumed, causes an agonising death within 20 minutes,” the FSB statement said.
The delivery man called the officer to arrange a time and place to meet. The officer had accepted the package when FSB officers intervened and detained the courier.
“I was ordered to carefully place the package on the ground. After which they explained to me that the bag contained beer, which contained a military‑grade poison intended to eliminate me, and that Polina’s account was used by Ukrainian intelligence officers,” the officer said, according to Russian media reports.
