Polish police chief hospitalized after receiving exploding gift after visiting Ukraine

Poland’s police chief Jaroslaw Szymczyk was hospitalized after a gift he received during a recent trip to Ukraine exploded.

“Yesterday at 7:50 a.m., an explosion occurred in a room adjacent to the office of the Police Chief,” Poland’s Interior Ministry stated Thursday.

“During the Police Chief’s working visit to Ukraine on December 11-12 this year, where he met with the heads of the Ukrainian Police and Emergency Situations Service, he received some gifts, one of which exploded.”

No details about the gift were released and Poland asked Ukraine what happened while the prosecutors office and other agencies “immediately opened” a case

Szymczyk’s injuries were described as minor and he is under observation.

The incident follows a number of Ukrainian embassies in Europe receiving suspicious packages. In November, a letter bomb explosion in the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid injured a security guard who was examining mail.

“Whoever stands behind staging this explosion, they won’t succeed in scaring Ukrainian diplomats or halting their daily efforts to strengthen Ukraine and counter the Russian aggression,” Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko said at the time.

Days later the embassies in Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Croatia and Italy, as well as consulates in Naples, Italy; Krakow, Poland and the Czech city of Brno, received “bloody parcels,” according to Nikolenko.

Those incidents remain under investigation as well.