{"id":1025476,"date":"2026-06-14T05:33:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T05:33:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1025476\/"},"modified":"2026-06-14T05:33:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T05:33:18","slug":"ukraine-police-chief-says-russia-recruits-young-women-to-kill-ukrainian-servicemen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1025476\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine police chief says Russia recruits young women to kill Ukrainian servicemen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Reuters<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ukraine\u2019s police chief has accused Russia of recruiting teenage Ukrainian girls to kill Ukrainian military personnel, following the arrest of a 17-year-old suspected of murdering a serviceman on the instructions of a Russian operative.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In an interview published on Wednesday by Ukrainian media outlet Cenzor.NET, national police chief Ivan Vyhivskyi said there had this year been six cases of contract killings arranged via the Telegram messaging app, one of which was prevented.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-175071\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Ukraine-Kyiv-memorial-240226009.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"824\"  \/><br \/>People stand near lit candles at a makeshift memorial for fallen Ukrainian defenders to mark the fourth anniversary of the full-scale Russian invasion, amid Russia\u2019s attack on Ukraine, at the Independence Square in Kyiv, Ukraine, on 24th February, 2026. PICTURE: Reuters\/Stringer<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are talking about planned murders organised by the special services of the aggressor state and carried out by Ukrainian citizens,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Russia\u2019s FSB security service was not immediately available for comment. Russian security services accuse Kyiv of recruiting Russians for bombings in Russia, and Ukrainian military intelligence has claimed responsibility for assassinating several senior Russian officers since Moscow\u2019s 2022 invasion.<\/p>\n<p>Vyhivskyi said Russian recruiters found young women via messaging platforms, promising them easy money and coordinating their actions remotely.<\/p>\n<p>Devon Spurgeon, a Telegram spokesperson, said in an emailed comment that attempts to recruit people for sabotage on Telegram were routinely detected and removed. \u201cTelegram is a platform for peaceful communication and privacy, not war.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\t<strong>We rely on our readers to fund Sight&#8217;s work &#8211; become a financial supporter today!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The young women were instructed to search for Ukrainian military personnel on dating websites, and received money from their handlers to rent apartments to meet them, Vyhivskyi said.<\/p>\n<p>They were told of places where they could obtain methadone, a synthetic opioid used as a painkiller that can be lethal in high doses, for lacing drinks, he said.<\/p>\n<p>More than 1,100 Ukrainians have been accused of committing arson, terrorism or sabotage in betrayal of their country during the war, Ukraine\u2019s security service has said.<\/p>\n<p>Police detained a 17-year-old woman in the western region of Zhytomyr earlier this month following the poisoning of a serviceman and said she had been communicating via Telegram with a man who was likely a Russian security services agent.<\/p>\n<p>She had received a parcel containing a crystalline substance which investigators presumed was methadone, police said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reuters Ukraine\u2019s police chief has accused Russia of recruiting teenage Ukrainian girls to kill Ukrainian military personnel, following&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1025477,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7654],"tags":[2000,299,26932,283367,332,657,17961],"class_list":["post-1025476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ukraine","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-fsb","tag-ivan-vyhivskyi","tag-russia","tag-ukraine","tag-ukraine-conflict"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116746833685367834","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1025476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1025477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1025476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1025476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1025476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}