Ukraine’s national police chief has levelled an explosive accusation that Russian intelligence services are recruiting teenage girls to contact Ukrainian soldiers on dating platforms and murder them with poisoned drinks laced with methadone. The claim, made in an interview with the Ukrainian outlet Censor.net, marks an alarming escalation in the Kremlin’s hybrid warfare tactics, which already extend well beyond the conventional battleground.

According to Ivan Vyhivskyj, this year alone his force has uncovered six such assassination plots orchestrated via the Telegram messaging app, one of which was foiled in advance. The most chilling incident involved a 17-year-old girl who was arrested on suspicion of killing a soldier. Vyhivskyj described a pattern in which handlers from Russia’s special services target vulnerable minors online, grooming them to approach troops through feigned romantic interest before administering lethal doses of the synthetic opioid.

Viewed from Kyiv, the tactic is a sinister adaptation of espionage tradecraft to the digital age, preying on societal vulnerabilities in a country exhausted by years of war. Moscow will almost certainly dismiss the allegations as propaganda, but Western security officials have long warned of Russian efforts to exploit civilian populations for covert operations. Analysts in London note that the use of dating apps and teenagers mirrors techniques previously attributed to Russian intelligence in other conflict zones.

The case underscores the increasingly blurred lines between military and civilian spheres in modern conflict, and the particular danger faced by a generation of Ukrainians coming of age amid pervasive disinformation and online predation. As the front holds in the east, Kyiv’s security services must now confront a threat that is at once harder to detect and morally corrosive: the weaponisation of Ukrainian youth against their own defenders. Whether these plots are isolated operations or a systematic campaign remains unclear, but Vyhivskyj’s warning suggests that the battlefield is no longer confined to trenches and drone strikes, but now lurks inside every smartphone.