Russian Bomb Threats, Telephone Terrorism, and Ongoing Risks

• Russia has faced a wave of bomb threats since the middle of September 2017.
• So far approximately 1 million people have been evacuated, with 170 cities and 2,600 locations targeted.
• The source of this ‘telephone terrorism’ remains unclear, however Ukrainian nationalists remain the most likely perpetrators.

Travel Information: Since the middle of September 2017 Russia has been targeted by waves of hoax bomb threats made via telephone. In October alone, 500,000 people were evacuated from 1,300 locations across 52 cities. All of the threats have so far turned out to be hoaxes, although security forces continue to treat all threats as credible. A variety of institutions have been targeted, all with the aim of causing maximum disruption.

These bomb threats serve as a persistent disruption to public life in major Russian cities. Although none of these threats has proven valid, the act of evacuating and searching each threat acts as a notable drain on resources, and a business disruption. The ongoing threat of terrorism from Islamic State, Ukrainian nationalists, and domestic insurgents, means that there is no safe way to discount the threats without a thorough physical search.

The calls have been made anonymously, although Ukrainian dissidents are most likely to be behind the attacks. Other, less likely, sources cited by local officials are the ‘Islamic State’ or nationalists from the restive Caucasus region. Frants Klintsevich, deputy head of the Defense Committee has claimed that a ‘full scale cyberwar’ is being waged against Russia. However, the Kremlin has remained reasonably quiet about the attacks, apparently in an effort to avoid drawing attention to them, and the state’s inability to prevent them. When the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, was questioned about them he called it ‘telephone terrorism’ and vowed the Kremlin would find who is responsible. Russian security forces have made a number of arrests, however it is highly likely that these people, mostly teenagers, were ‘copycats’ of the actual perpetrators, due to the ease with which they were traced. The real perpetrators placed the calls via an internet phone system and continue to prove much harder to track. By calling via internet services it is possible to mask the unique Internet Protocol (IP) address and hide the identity and location of the caller. The use of this technology has made efforts to pursue the perpetrators ineffective, and the likelihood that the calls originate abroad has further hampered efforts to apprehend them.