Ukraine's Security Service (SSU) says Russian intelligence agencies have significantly intensified efforts to assassinate Ukrainian servicemen using so-called "honey trap" tactics, luring military personnel into deadly encounters arranged through online dating platforms.
According to the SSU, military counterintelligence has prevented more than 50 such plots since the beginning of 2026.
The agency said Russian operatives typically use dating websites and messaging app chat groups, where agents posing as women establish contact with Ukrainian soldiers using fake accounts. After gaining their trust, they allegedly arrange meetings at preselected locations where the victims are to be killed.
The SSU said attackers most commonly rely on improvised explosive devices planted at the meeting site, but have also attempted to use lethal poisons made from narcotic, psychotropic, and other chemical substances.
In one case cited by the agency, a woman allegedly recruited by Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) was arrested in the Kharkiv region in March 2025 after posing as a volunteer and delivering food and medicine contaminated with poison to a Ukrainian serviceman.
In another case, the SSU said a Russian agent sent a Ukrainian soldier a bottle containing a fatal dose of methadone and invited him to drink it during a video date. Security officers intercepted the package before delivery, and forensic analysis confirmed the presence of toxic substances.
The SSU also recalled a January 2026 incident in Zaporizhzhia, where it said military counterintelligence detained an alleged FSB hitman who had lured a Ukrainian soldier to an industrial area under the guise of a date arranged through a dating website. According to investigators, the attacker stabbed the serviceman six times in the neck, chest, abdomen, and leg. The agency said it later identified the woman who had communicated with the victim through a fake account and persuaded him to attend the meeting.
Investigations are ongoing under articles of Ukraine's Criminal Code covering high treason, premeditated murder, and terrorism. If convicted, the suspects face life imprisonment with confiscation of property.
