- A man is accused of trying to poison 77 attendees of a Russian pilots' banquet with cake and whiskey.
- Yegor Semenov brought the bottles of whiskey and a 44-pound cake to the banquet, Kommersant reported.
A man in Russia is accused of delivering poisoned cake and whiskey to a military pilots' school banquet, according to local reports.
Security officials said Yegor Semenov brought bottles of Jameson Irish whiskey and a 44-pound cake to a restaurant in Armavir, a city in southwestern Russia, where graduates of the Armavir Higher Military Aviation School of Pilots were hosting a celebration, Russian outlet Kommersant reported.
The cake was decorated with the school's emblem, and Semenov said the gifts were from a graduate who could not attend the Saturday event, Kommersant reported.
However, he did not reveal the name of the purported sender, per Kommersant.
Some of the 77 guests in the hall found the sudden arrival of the treats suspicious, and reported the gifts to the Federal Security Service, according to the outlet.
FSB officials said the cake and whiskey were poisoned, and claimed that the gifts were arranged by Ukraine's spy services, per Kommersant.
Semenov was later arrested and detained for 15 days on charges of petty hooliganism in what appears to be a separate incident, Kommersant reported on Tuesday.
State-owned news agency RIA Novosti, which ran an article on Kommersant's report, cited a statement from the Krasnodar region's courts that said Semenov was arrested because he'd been using "obscene language" and behaved disruptively in public.
He is now being investigated in relation to the attempted poisoning, per Kommersant.
The reports come after Russian Telegram channel and military bloggers wrote of Semenov on Sunday and Monday.
Baza reported that Semenov is 32, and had tried to fly out of the region from Stavropol after delivering the cake and whiskey.
The Fighter Bomber channel wrote that the banquet had been a gathering of pilots who graduated 20 years ago, and that some of them now hold senior ranks.
The pilots grew skeptical of the cake and whiskey after they tried to toast the person who gifted them the party goods, only to realize no one could say who the sender was, the channel added.
A picture of the cake, carved up for serving, was posted by the channel.
The Security Services of Ukraine and a representative for the Krasnodar court did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours.