Telephone Bomb Threats Force Evacuations of Thousands in Moscow, Other Major Russian Cities

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 6-7 – More than 50,000 people have been evacuated from more than 40 sites in Moscow over the last 24 hours in response to telephone bomb threats. None of the threats have been confirmed, but the authorities are taking no chances especially in the run-up to the Victory Day holiday (lenta.ru/news/2019/05/06/minn/ and kommersant.ru/doc/3962563).

            This wave of telephone bombings has forced evacuations in almost every major Russian city as well, including

·         St. Petersburg (rbc.ru/rbcfreenews/5cd16eb99a7947dbcd52ebd5)

·         Volgograd (volga-kaspiy.ru/accidents/politsiya-i-pozharnye-ne-nashli-bomby-v-volgograd-siti.html)

·         Yaroslavl (progorod76.ru/news/34154)  

·         Krasnoyarsk (krsk.rbc.ru/krsk/07/05/2019/5cd18f339a7947eae1944fec)

·         Nizhny Novgorod (interfax-russia.ru/Povoljie/news.asp?sec=1672&id=1028182)

·         Yekaterinburg (e1.ru/news/spool/news_id-66081112.html)

·         Novosibirsk (tass.ru/sibir-news/6409184)

·         Voronezh (bloknot-voronezh.ru/news/minirovanie-rynka-dvukh-tts-i-biznes-tsentra-v-vor-1098131)

·         Kazan (business-gazeta.ru/news/423556)

·         Samara (pohvistnevo-inform.ru/news/1354-zaminirovali-v-samare-evakuiruyut-lyudei-iz-biznes-centra-skala.html)

·         Rostov (ria.ru/20190507/1553336904.html)

Other cities undoubtedly have been hit by this plague as well, the largest since the first of the telephone bomb threat began two years ago and a problem that has put Russians on edge both because they do not know when the threats may turn out to be real and they do not understand why the authorities seem powerless to do anything about it.

For background on telephone bombings in Russia over the last two years, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/03/anonymous-bomb-threats-empty-661.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/02/russians-struggle-with-continuing.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/02/russias-vaunted-security-services-look.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/02/telephone-bomb-threats-in-moscow-force.html, and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/01/telephone-bomb-threats-again-forcing.html.