Anna Nikolayenko, a journalist with the news website Farvater.Skhid, received several emails with bomb threats in her corporate and personal inboxes on 30 January, she reported to Valentyna Troyan, the Institute of Mass Information representative in Luhansk oblast.
Nikolayenko added that 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.