Police: Bomb threats proved false and were sent from Russian IP addresses

The police checked all the buildings where bombs were said to have been planted on October 14. The vast majority of these threats came from Russian IP addresses, reports the National Police communications department.

The police processed over 2,000 calls, which were mainly about bombs planted in administrative buildings. Cases under Art. 259 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine have been opend for knowingly false reports of a threat to the safety of citizens.

The bomb threat emails

On October 14, multiple Ukrainian media outlets received bomb warnings to their corporate inboxes: the Suspilne Cherkasy team, the online news outlet "Pershyi Kryvorizkyi", the International Multimedia Broadcasting Platform of Ukraine, the "Syla Pravdy" journalist Valentyna Kuts, Suspilne Rivne, Khmelnytskyi-based journalist The ZMINA Center for Human Rights and the Museum of Ukraine's History in the Second World War, LIGA.net journalist Volodymyr Fomichov, several other Suspilne branches, "Detector Media", "Ukrainska Pravda" also received warnings about bombs planted in their buildings.

The letters list the Ukrainian journalists whom the sender blames for the possible bombings. The sender asks to place all responsibility on "the terrorist group Fire Cells Group".

The journalists in question are Iryna Sysak, Valeria Yehoshyna, and Yulia Khymeryk, who are the authors of the Radio Liberty investigation into the FSB's recruitment of Ukrainian children to set fire to UAF cars, released on October 8.

The National Police says that Russia may be behind the bomb warnings, aiming to destabilize the situation in Ukraine's regions.

The Radio Liberty project "Skhemy" found a person whose identity matches that of the sender of the bomb threat letters to public organizations and media professionals. This person lives in occupied Crimea and owns a Russian passport.