Fox News reported Thursday that a vodka company was ready to sell some of its first batches of bottles to the United Kingdom - but they ran into trouble. Ukraine border guards noticed something was not right with the origin of some of the ingredients.
The first batch of Atomik Chernobyl Spirits - made using apples grown inside the Chernobyl nuclear facility exclusion zone - is now in the hands of the Ukrainian Secret Service.
According to the Chernobyl Spirit Company last week, 1,500 bottles of their Atomik alcoholic spirit were seized March 19, after an investigation by the SBU, Ukraine's security agency, while it was on its way to the UK.
"The actions of Ukrainian law enforcement agencies are damaging the reputation of Ukraine as an open country for doing business," The New York Post quoted CSC lawyer Elina Smirnova as saying in a statement posted on the Atomik website.
CSC said the UK deal was a major win for Ukraine's ailing economy, but now production has been suspended by the government. The vodka maker said service officials were accusing them of using "forged Ukrainian excise stamps" and that's the reason why the booze is being held. The company denies the allegations.
While the alcohol's ingredients may have contained a very small amount of radioactive ingredients, a team of chemists working for CSC has reportedly confirmed there was no indication of toxicity after the distilling process.
CSC was established by professor Jim Smith, an environmental scientist from the UK who has made an extensive research on the Chernobyl disaster since 1990, and his Ukrainian colleagues.
In 2019, CSC introduced its first taste of the alcoholic beverage made from apples grown in the Narodychi District, which is still inhabited but near the area of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant catastrophe.
