Two Ukrainian embassies receive threatening letters following Madrid letter-bomb incident
Following the letter-bomb delivery to the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid, two other Ukrainian embassies received letters with “highly specific threats.” The Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said this to the Ukrinform news agency, at the meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which took place today in Lodz, Poland.
Kuleba said that threatening letters arrived on November 30 and December 1. The minister did not specify the nature of the threats, nor the locations of the two embassies that received them. He promised, however, that the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry would soon make a statement on the matter.
When asked whether the explosion at the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid was a new form of terrorism against Ukrainians abroad, Kuleba replied:
This is clearly a new form of terrorism. We are working very actively, together with the Spanish authorities, to find out who stands behind this. Of course, we have a guess about who this is, but we need to trace the entire network of agents and people involved in this campaign.
On November 30, a letter bomb was delivered to the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid. An embassy security agent, who received the letter and took it outside as a precaution before opening, was injured by the explosion.
The envelope with an explosive device was addressed to the Ukrainian Ambassador Serhii Pohoreltsev. The diplomat believes that Russia might be behind the attack.
Following the incident, information emerged about letter bombs also delivered to the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish Foreign Ministry, the U.S. embassy in Madrid, the Torrejón de Ardoz airbase, and to the offices of Instalaza, a company that supplies weapons for Ukraine.
Kuleba described the attacks as a “deliberate large-scale campaign” against Ukraine, adding that its perpetrators will be punished.