How Britain Used Whisky to Fool Russian Surveillance and Supply Ukraine With Weapons Ahead of the Invasion

British Defence Minister Ben Wallace (left) shakes hands with Ukrainian Minister of Defense Oleksii Reznikov on May 24 during his visit to Kyiv, Ukraine. Wallace and Reznikov used whisky terminology to stealthily ship weapons into the Ukraine leading up to the Russian Invasion. (Ukrainian Defense Ministry Press Office via AP)

In an interview published Saturday in the Times, Secretary of State for Defence of the United Kingdom Ben Wallace surprised many by announcing his intention to step down. In the same interview, Wallace shared a strategy he used to circumvent Russian surveillance and smuggle weapons into the Ukraine. In an unlikely turn of events, it involves whisky.

Anticipating Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Wallace and Ukraine’s defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, developed a secret code using whisky terminology to sneakily discuss the sorts of weapons that the United Kingdom would ship to Ukraine. Wallace told the Times that Next-generation Light Anti-tank Weapon missiles would be referred to as Glenfiddich, a prominent scotch whisky brand, and Harpoon anti-ship missiles would be called Islay, one of Scotland’s five major whisky regions.

The coded language was necessary because the nations didn’t have a secure line between them.

“I would text him saying ‘I’ve got some whisky for you’ or ‘the whisky is on its way,” Wallace told The Times. “We just picked codewords, minister to minister.”

According to Wallace, Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu promised him there was no invasion planned mere days before it began in full force. Knowing this was a lie, Wallace played it cool and smirked behind the minister’s back.

“We were exchanging gifts and I gave him a bottle of Glenfiddich,” Wallace said. “He didn’t know what it meant. The joke was on him.”

In an interview with Times Radio, Oleksiy Goncharenko, Ukrainian MP for the Odesa Region, reacted to the story, saying: “That is absolutely in style of Ben Wallace, this kind of perfect British humor.”

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