Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 22 – After a brief
respite late last fall, telephone bomb threats are again, in the wake of the Magnitogorsk
tragedy, forcing the evacuations of Russians from schools, hospitals, airports,
railway stations, and apartment blocks in cities and towns across the Russian
Federation.
The only difference from a similar
spate of such calls between September 2017 and October 2018, when more than a
million Russians had to be evacuated, is that many of the threats are coming in
via the Internet rather than by phone (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/09/more-than-million-russians-have-been.html
and
But
three things remain the same: First, the Moscow media have largely ignored
these cases except when they happen within the city. Second, the threats have
in all cases been found to be without foundation and only a few of those who
have made them have been arrested. And third, these attacks have exacerbated
Russian fears about today and tomorrow in their country.
Some
idea of the spread of these attacks can be gleaned from the reports that have
surfaced in recent days. They include
the following: in-news.ru/news/proishestvia/v-nizhnevartovske-evakuirovali-uchashchikhsya-vsekh-shkol-i-chastichno-detskikh-sadov-.html, 1yar.tv/ru/article/all/short_news/incidents/190232,
bryansk.kp.ru/online/news/3358030/,
ekb-on-air.ru/45059,udm.aif.ru/incidents/crime/yuriskonsult_iz_udmurtii_chetyre_raza_minirovala_shkoly_v_votkinske,
novayagazeta.ru/news/2019/
01/22/148546-neizvestnye-soobschili-o-minirovanii-sotsialnyh-uchrezhdeniy-na-kamchatke,
echochel.ru/news/2019/01/21/78132/,
31tv.ru/novosti/pjanyj-vzryvatel-reshil-protestirovat-rabotu-specsluzhb-na-juzhnom-urale.html/,
yarreg.ru/articles/v-yaroslavskoy-oblasti-zaderjali-terrorista/,
delo.kg/zilaliev-v-sude-razvlekaetsya/,
gazeta.spb.ru/2080508-0/
and versia.ru/na-kamchatke-vsled-za-magnitogorskom-zaminirovali-neskolko-shkol-i-bolnic.
Two URA news agency journalists,
Stanislav Zakharkin and Mikhail Bely spoke with specialists in the siloviki and
the expert community about this plague. The experts were unanimous that such false
reports will spread because some people not prepared to engage in violence
enjoy sparking fear in society (ura.news/articles/1036277360).
This presents real
dangers to Russia, the experts said. On the one hand, there simply aren’t
enough police personnel to track down all the leads and arrest the
perpetrators, something that gives those who engage in these actions a feeling
of security. And on the other, real
terrorists will make use of these waves of false telephone terrorism.
They can do so either by engaging in
it themselves to undermine social cohesion or by counting on the authorities to
be unable to track them if it they are trying to find telephone
terrorists. In either case, some of them
will get through; and that possibility too spreads the kind of panic throughout
society on which terrorists thrive.
The return of
telephone terrorism is not the only unfortunate revenant on public view in
Russia. First, Russian athletes are again having to compete under neutral flags
because of doping (sport-express.ru/athletics/news/iaaf-odobrila-zayavki-lasickene-shubenkova-i-esche-40-legkoatletov-rf-1503206/).
Second,
activism among long haul truckers appears to be resuming at precisely the time
that shortages in some stores are occurring, thus giving the drivers the kind
of leverage which may gain them more success than earlier (forum-msk.org/material/news/15360776.html).
And today, in a real throwback, a
passenger on a domestic Russian route tried to hijack it to Afghanistan. His plot
was foiled, but it revived some unfortunate memories (znak.com/2019-01-22/passazhir_reysa_surgut_moskva_potreboval_napravit_samolet_v_afganistan).
These things are not related, but they
come together in the minds of people, adding to a sense of anger and
hopelessness about the future that cannot fail to have consequences for how
Russians think about their country and its current leadership.
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