Zelensky provokes Putin? Russia says Kyiv tried to kill military officer with UK-made nerve agent

Russia’s FSB claims it foiled a dramatic Ukrainian assassination plot targeting a senior Russian military officer using beer bottles laced with a British-made variant of the banned VX nerve agent. According to Russian authorities, Ukrainian military intelligence (HUR) allegedly established contact via an online persona known as “Polina”—created with AI—to lure the officer and deliver the poisoned gift through a local intermediary in Donetsk, who was later detained. FSB accounts say chemical analysis detected colchicine and a British VX-analogue that would have caused death within 20 minutes.