"Skhemy": Person with bomb threat sender's data lives in Crimea

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, reports Radio Liberty.

As the journalists discovered, the group that claimed responsibility for the "mass bomb planting" actively posts calls to set the cars of Ukrainian servicepeople on fire and share the arson footage on social media. They offer payment upwards of $100 for this "job".

They also have "groups" on Telegram, created in late August 2024, where they share videos of enlistment office employees detaining Ukrainian citizens for conscription and call to persecute these soldiers, promising $1,000 or more for this. These groups also advertise other Telegram channels opposing the serving of draft notices in Ukraine.

Furthermore, the journalists discovered that in early October, representatives of this "group" contacted several Ukrainian state bodies and offered to assassinate top security officials and public figures. They introduced themselves as an organization that "has long been executing forceful actions and solving issues through physical elimination on commission," and that their "primary" line of work was "carrying out actions of mass disruption, planting bombs in state structures, sabotage operations of any level." The website of the "group" states that it provides such "services" as "racketeering, contract killings, carjacking, personal injury, arson."

RFE/RL's President Stephen Capus said they would not be intimidated and would support the three women journalists mentioned in the emails with bomb threats.

"These journalists recently released an investigation into how Russian special services recruit teenagers to set fire to Ukrainian military vehicles. We cannot explain the motivation behind these outrageous threats. We do not succumb to intimidation and support our journalists, who will continue to inform the Ukrainian audience fearlessly and impartially. We are also ready to fully cooperate with the authorities in their investigations," said Stephen Capus.

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.