2 women who poisoned 46 Russian troops, in shoot-out with FSB: report

Ukrainian saboteurs alleged to have poisoned 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 Bakhchysarai fled when authorities attempted to detain them in Crimea, the Telegram channel "Kremlin Snuffbox" said on Tuesday.

Police went to apprehend the two at a private house in Yalta but were surprised to find them "well armed" and "well prepared," the post said.

The two opened fire and fled the scene in a car, and authorities do not know their 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.

In December, members of a Ukrainian partisan group called the Crimean Combat Seagulls poisoned and killed 24 Russian soldiers after lacing their vodka with arsenic and strychnine.

At the time, Kremlin Snuffbox quoted unnamed sources as saying that "two nice girls" tricked the unit in Simferopol, Crimea, into drinking the vodka, according to the Kyiv Post translation.

In another incident, saboteurs killed 18 and hospitalized 14 Russian personnel in Bakhchysarai, 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 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 reports of two mass poisonings of Russian troops in Mariupol, Ukraine, in 2023.

Ukrainian resistance and partisan groups sometimes use acts of sabotage to harass Russian soldiers in Crimea — the Ukrainian peninsula that Russia has occupied since 2014 — and other occupied territories and supply intelligence for Ukrainian strikes on military installations.