Pershyi Kryvorizkyi team received bomb threats for three consecutive days

The Pershyi Kryvorizkyi editorial team received anonymous emails for three consecutive days (January 29, 30, and 31) claiming that bombs had been planted in the building where the media outlet's office is located.

The news outlet's executive director Sofia Skyba reported this to Kateryna Lysiuk, the Institute of Mass Information representative in Dnipropetrovska oblast.

In the emails, the unknown sender says that explosive devices have been planted in various buildings throughout the city: schools, kindergartens, hospitals, shopping malls, and buildings hosting local media offices. The latest email is different in that the sender no longer recommends evacuating people from the facilities to avoid casualties but threatens to blow up the buildings, describing the deaths, the scale of destruction, and claiming that the explosive devices can not be found with help of the relevant services. Most importantly, they openly proclaim their intention to kill three journalists and their editors.

Sofia Skyba said that the police had been notified of the emails.

“Their goal is to confuse us, distract us from work, intimidate us. Lena (Olena Smolina, journalist, ed.) reports on municipal procurement, fights the spread of disinformation, as does Zhenya (Yevhenia Bykova, journalist, ed.). Zhenya works with municipal issues as well, sends queries to the city authorities, and our Svitlana (Svitlana Koval, journalist, ed.) lives in Mykolaiv,” Skyba said.

In a comment to the IMI representative, Angelina Kradozhon, senior communications inspector at the Kryvyi Rih District Police Department, said that specialists had received the reports and checked the building where the editorial office is located for explosive devices.

“Last week, having received a report about bombs planted in buildings, our officers went there and checked, but no explosives were found,” noted Angelina Kradozhon. The inspector also said that bomb reports continue to arrive today and that inspections are ongoing.

On February 3, Chernihiv online news outlet Cheline received an anonymous email to their editorial inbox. The email claimed that bombs had been planted in schools, kindergartens, and shopping malls across the city.