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In Europe, there have been reports of bombs on planes since Monday: dozens of flights were affected, some had to change their routes, several countries scrambled military fighters into the skies. By the end of the week, they were supplemented by reports of mining and offices of news corporations.
It is unclear who is behind the messages: in the emails received by Italian organizations, the senders describe themselves as “fighters of the Men's State” and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
On Friday, November 6, Ryanair, WizzAir, KLM and other airlines flying to various cities across Europe received reports of bombs on board. As in previous days, after landing the planes are inspected by specialists - and so far nothing dangerous has been found on any of them.
Some flights change routes and land at other airports. Often, local authorities scramble fighter jets to escort passenger aircraft (on Friday, for example, the Hungarian Air Force Gripen escorted three airliners through the country's airspace).
Bomb scares have not only affected the airline industry. On Tuesday, the Bulgarian Ministry of Internal Affairs said that “various institutions” had received threats, and on Monday in Italy, almost two thousand people were evacuated due to reports of mining in educational institutions.
Irish broadcaster RTÉ received similar messages on Friday, as did several other Irish and British media outlets. The employees were evacuated, and no suspicious objects were found in the media offices.
“It is not yet known who is behind these threats, whether they are individual people or a centralized or coordinated attack. However, these threats come amid ongoing disruption to aviation across Europe caused by similar reports, and it appears highly likely that this is a coordinated campaign to cause chaos,” the Irish government said in a statement commenting on media reports of the bombing.
Who is behind the messages?
Irish media received reports of the bombs via email. According to Reuters, the author of the message calls himself “Mikhail Andropov.” Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was identified as the sender of reports of bombs in Italian schools on Monday. Police are investigating who is really behind the hoax reports.
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On Tuesday, writes Il Fatto Quotodiano, Rome airport operator Aeroporti di Roma (ADR) received an email about bombs. This letter was signed by “fighters of the province of Nevyansk.” Nevyansk is a city in the Sverdlovsk region with a population of just over 20 thousand people. Other Italian media do not mention the Russian city in connection with the threats.
The letter, received by ADR on Thursday, is written on behalf of the “fighters of the Men's State.”
In the telegram channel of the founder of the “Male State” (declared extremist and banned in Russia in 2021) Vladislav Pozdnyakov “Pozdnyakov 3.0”, a post was published on the evening of the same day about non-involvement in the mining reports.
“Whoever today organizes provocations in the EU countries on behalf of this “brand” is acting in his own interests, simply using someone else’s flag,” the post says. Moreover, Pozdnyakov has not had anything to do with the movement since 2019, and since 2021 it does not exist at all, the statement said.
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The Pozdnyakov 3.0 channel has about 800 thousand subscribers and is registered with Roskomnadzor. Pozdnyakov’s former channel also redirected subscribers to this channel.
The BBC sent a question about the movement’s involvement in threats to the “Vlad” telegram account, which is listed in the description of the “Pozdnyakov 3.0” channel. Judging by a number of indirect signs, the telegram account “Vlad” may belong to Pozdnyakov: in particular, a phone number is linked to the account ID, by the number of which you can find a deleted page on Vkontakte, which was previously associated with Pozdnyakov.
The account wrote in response to the BBC: “What a man’s state? It hasn’t existed for many years.” This correspondence between “Vlad” and the BBC correspondent was soon published by the Pozdnyakov 3.0 channel.
The BBC cannot independently confirm who responded to the messages.
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