A wave of false bomb threats triggered mass evacuations at schools, kindergartens, hospitals and museums across at least nine Russian regions, local officials and media reported Tuesday.
In the Leningrad region, Governor Alexander Drozdenko said “a dozen” schools, kindergartens and hospitals responded to bomb scares. The hoaxes came amid Day of Knowledge celebrations that mark the start of the new school year every Sept. 1.
“We can’t ignore these threats, even though we understand the enemy’s goal to… ruin the holiday for children and adults,” Drozdenko wrote on Telegram, likely a reference to Ukraine.
St. Petersburg and Leningrad region police told the Fontanka news outlet that “more than 100 institutions” received false threats.
In Moscow, at least four museums, including the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, evacuated visitors or temporarily closed for what they called “technical reasons.”
A government building in the Far Eastern Zabaikalsky region and a number of hospitals in the central republic of Tatarstan were also reportedly evacuated.
Fake bomb threats were also reported across the Ural Mountains, the Yamal-Nenets autonomous district, the Orenburg region and the Krasnoyarsk region.
Mass bomb threats, which the Kremlin referred to as “telephone terrorism,” have periodically plagued Russian cities in the years before and since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
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