- Russia security forces attempted to arrest two women suspected of poisoning its troops in Crimea.
- The alleged saboteurs pulled weapons and escaped after a shoot-out.
- The women are suspected of giving food and drinks laced with poison to Russian soldiers.
Ukrainian saboteurs who are alleged to have poisoned and killed 46 Russian soldiers are on the run in annexed Crimea after a shoot-out with police, a local report says.
Two young saboteurs who had poisoned members of the Russian military in Simferopol and Bakhchisarai fled when authorities attempted to detain them in Crimea, Telegram channel Kremlin Snuffbox said on Tuesday.
The police went to apprehend the female suspects at a private house in Yalta but were surprised to find them "well armed" and "well prepared," the post said.
The saboteurs opened fire and fled the scene in a car, and authorities do not know their current whereabouts.
Three officers were killed and two were wounded in the shoot-out, a source in Russia's Federal Security Service told the Telegram channel.
It was reported in December that members of a Ukrainian partisan group called Crimean Combat Seagulls poisoned and killed 24 Russian soldiers after lacing their vodka with arsenic and strychnine.
At the time, Snuffbox quoted unnamed sources as saying that "two nice girls" tricked the unit in Simferopol, Crimea, into drinking the vodka, per the Kyiv Post translation.
In another incident, saboteurs killed 18 and hospitalized 14 Russian personnel in Bakhchisarai, Crimea, by putting arsenic and rat poison in pies and beer, Kremlin Snuffbox previously reported.
Russian military personnel stationed in Crimea have been asked not to take any food or any drinks from strangers and to detain any suspicious young women who approach them to prevent further incidents of poisoning,
Business Insider could not independently verify the report.
There were also been reports of two mass poisonings of Russian troops in Mariupol in 2023.
Acts of sabotage by Ukrainian resistance and partisan groups are used to harass Russian soldiers in Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula occupied by Russia since 2014, and other occupied territories, and supply intelligence for Ukrainian strikes on military installations.