Anna Nikolayenko, a journalist with the news website Farvater.Skhid, and Anastasia Shybiko, CEO of Vilne Radio (formerly based in Bakhmut, Donetsk oblast), received emails claiming that bombs had been planted in their buildings, as the two journalsits reported to Valentyna Troyan, the Institute of Mass Information representative in Luhansk oblast.

Anastasia Shybiko said that the most recent “bomb” letter her team received had arrived on 1 February. All of them arrived between 30 January 30 and 1 February.

“We found these letters on our main corporate inbox and in our personal inboxes. This time, journalist Olena Rusinova and me received the letters to our personal emails,” Vilne Radio CEO said.

Anastasia added that her team did not take such letters seriously.

“First of all, all our work is done in remote. Since our relocation from Bakhmut we don’t have the office which has been the subject of so many ‘bomb threats’. Second, these emails all follow the same set of clichés, they are all the same in content and structure. Third, this is a mass mailing campaign, and the other recipients’ addresses are not even hidden,” she said, adding that these were the reasons why her team had not contacted the police regarding this issue and saw no point in doing so.

“This is a run-of-the-mill, amateurish, and very cheap ‘campaign’ that aims to intimidate us or has some other purpose. But so far it has just been funny,” the journalist said.

Farvater.Skhid‘s Anna Nikolayenko said she used to receive similar emails with threats while living in Luhansk oblast.

“But that was a long time ago. So I wasn’t surprised. But this was the first time since the full-scale invasion, as far as I remember. Identical letters arrived in both my personal and corporate inboxes on 30 January. However, I only noticed my letter on 4 February when looking through the spam folder,” Anna said.

She added that “such letters only make her smile and provoke no other emotion,” since it is unclear who they were intended for.

“Media professionals are people who know how to work with information, know what information hygiene is, and know how to tell fakes apart from truth. On the other hand, this can also be part of the information war. Such cases shouldn’t be ignored in silence,” the journalist said.

She added that this could have been a bad joke by a Ukrainian or a real Russian attempt to destabilise the already strained society in Ukraine. “After all, the email referred to institutions and organisations where bombs had supposedly been installed in the same fashion, and the idea was likely was that we as journalists would take certain action and report this to the police, which, in turn, would trigger a wave of rumour, panic, and other such things,” Anna Nikolayenko said.

She added that she has been in contact with the competent law enforcement bodies on this issue. The team is still coordinating regarding this matter and deciding on further action.

Previously

As reported earlier, the news website Kremenchutskyi Telegraf (Poltava oblast) received an email on 2 February claiming that bombs had been planted in two dozen facilities in the oblast. The news outlet MediaDokaz (based in Kremenchuk, Poltava oblast) received two emails threatening to detonate bombs on several locations on the same day.

Three news websites based in Poltava oblast (Poltavska Dumka, Poltavska Khvylya, and Kremenchutskyi Telegraf), received emails claiming that bombs had been planted in their office buildings on 30 January 2026. National Police departments in 22 oblasts received over 2,000 bomb reports on the same day. Namely, Detector Media, 18000, and Pershyi Kryvorizkyi received emails to that effect.