Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 1 – In the week
leading up to the new year’s holiday, more than 50 sites in 30 Russian cities,
including five airports and some government offices were evacuated following
bomb threats that later proved to be false.
These latest evacuations mean more than three million Russians have been
forced to leave buildings since these calls began in September.
TASS and other Russian outlets
reported that anonymous telephone callers said that 53 objects in 30 cities,
including Khabarovsk, Vladivotok, Anadyr, Magadan, Makhachkala, St. Petersburg,
and Moscow, had been mined, forcing officials to evacuate those in them (tass.ru/proisshestviya/4854654
and kavpolit.com/articles/informatsija_o_minirovanii_torgovyh_tsentrov_v_ros-37018/).
More seriously, various outlets
reported that several hours before the beginning of the new year, officials
were forced to evacuate five Russian airports for the same reason, disrupting
transportation of celebrants (rbc.ru/rbcfreenews/5a491c8b9a7947a9fd11a392?from=main and
babr24.com/irk/?IDE=169084).
Despite a massive manhunt, only one
arrest was made this past week (nakanune.ru/news/2017/12/31/22494097/),
but Vladimir Putin did sign into law a new measure that will increase penalties
for such telephone terrorism to as much as ten years in prison (lenta.ru/news/2017/12/31/nakazanie/).
For background on this wave of
forced evacuations, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2017/10/telephone-terrorism-continuing-pushing.html
and newsru.com/russia/27nov2017/miny.html.
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