Ukraine's foreign minister accused Russia of being behind a series of more than a dozen letters containing explosives or animal parts that were sent to Ukrainian diplomats around the world.
This campaign aims to sow fear, Dmytro Kuleba told CNN spokesman Matthew Chance in an exclusive interview in Kyiv on Friday.
When asked who he thought was behind the letters, Kuleba told CNN: "I feel tempted to name Russia straight away, because first of all you have to answer the question, who benefits?"
Maybe this terror response is the Russian answer to the diplomatic horror we created for Russia on the international arena, and this is how they try to fight back while they are losing the real diplomatic battles one after another. He said that Russia was either directly responsible or someone who sympathizes with the Russian cause and tries to spread fear. There will be a conclusion made by investigators, but I think these two versions make most of the sense. Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova sent CNN a single word comment in response to Kuleba's claim: psycho. There have been 17 cases of embassies receiving either letter bombs, false bomb letters or letters containing animals parts, like the eyes of cows and pigs, according to Kuleba.
CNN was shown an image of one of the letters containing what officials said was the eyeball of a pig inside a padded envelope.
Kuleba said the explosion happened at the embassy of Ukraine in Spain. What followed was more weird, and I would even say sick. Kuleba was referring to an explosion that occurred on Wednesday at Ukraine's embassy in Madrid, injuring a Ukrainian employee who was handling a letter addressed to the country's ambassador to Spain. Spanish officials said on Thursday a letter bomb was sent to the country's prime minister last week and another to the US embassy.
The Embassy of Kyiv in Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Croatia, Italy, Austria and the consulates general in Naples and Krakow received suspicious packages, according to Oleh Nikolenko, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine.
The packages were soaked in a liquid of a characteristic color and had a corresponding smell, he said. We are looking at the meaning of this message. Ukraine has put all of its overseas diplomatic stations under increased security after the slew of suspicious mail.
The Ukrainian Consulate in Brno, a city southeast of the Czech Republic, was briefly evacuated on Friday after receiving a suspicious package containing animal tissue, Czech police said in a tweet on Friday.
Kuleba earlier urged foreign governments to ensure maximum protection of Ukrainian diplomatic institutions in accordance with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
In addition to the suspicious packages, Nikolenko said the entrance to the Ambassador's residence in the Vatican was vandalized and the Ukrainian Embassy in Kazakhstan received a report of a bomb threat, which was later not confirmed.
Nikolenko also stated that the Ukrainian Embassy in the United States received a letter from a Ukrainian newspaper with a photocopy of a critical article about Ukraine. He said that most of the envelopes were sent from within Europe.
The Czech police said that the consulate in Brno and its immediate surroundings, including a kindergarten, were evacuated Friday. After investigating the package, the police said it did not contain any explosives, adding that they had no information to indicate that people at the consulate or its vicinity were in danger.
Initial analysis shows that the package contained animal tissue. A detailed analysis of will be conducted in laboratories now, the police tweeted.