Bomb threats to Irish media organisations are the latest in a wave of similar incidents across Europe this week that have forced flights to divert and schools in Italy to be evacuated.
The events echo similar mass false bomb threats in Montenegro in 2022 and in Moldova in 2023, where authorities said there had been 400 fake bomb threats in less than a year, straining the capacity of police to respond.
This week’s events also come in the wake of a series of hacks on blood banks and supermarket fridges in Ireland and France that forced the mass discarding of fresh food.
For many security analysts, the events clearly fall into a pattern of suspected “hybrid warfare” by Russia, ranging from sabotage to hacking to provocative pranks and exploding parcels, aimed to destabilise and weaken countries that are supportive of Ukraine.
A signature part of such practices is that it is difficult to pin down who is responsible, something that leads to divisive debates and can fuel a sense of uncertainty and fear.
The 279 fake bomb threat emails that were sent to Italian schools this week and forced mass evacuations were signed in the name of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, but the claim is not being taken as credible.
The bomb threat sent to Italian airports that claimed explosives were on board an Aer Lingus flight from Dublin to Rome on Thursday, which led to it being escorted to a French airbase by fighter jets, was sent in the name of “Male State”.
Male State is a Russian misogynistic group founded in 2016 by a fitness blogger that was designated as an extremist group by Moscow after it conducted a campaign of harassment against women, gay people and organisations it deemed to be promoting diversity.
After Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine it morphed into a new form dedicated to glorifying the war in Ukraine and shifted to support the Russian government. Its founder became a pro-Russian war blogger, and the original form of the movement faded away.
Using the name Male State in a bomb threat is “a strange choice”, says Anna Kruglova, a lecturer in terrorism at the University of Salford who has studied the group.
“It feels like there is an intention to attribute it specifically to Russia, or show that this is somehow affiliated to Russia.”
Male State did once send a false bomb threat against a Russian restaurant chain that published an advertisement using a non-white model, which it deemed to be against traditional values. But Kruglova considers it unlikely that the group is behind the recent threats against planes.
“They’ve never, as far as I know, been engaging in any bomb threats outside of Russia or at large scale. It’s not really typical for them,” Kruglova says.
The text of the threat also did not use language typical of Male State. “It’s probably not anyone within the movement,” she concludes.
Investigations have pointed to Russian involvement in several incidents in Europe described as hybrid attacks in recent years, including drone disruption at airports, sabotage, arson and offensive stunts in France apparently intended to stir up ethnic tensions.
But it is particularly hard to track down who is behind an email threat.
“With current technologies, it could be anyone at all, and if the group doesn’t claim it, it’s very hard to track where it is coming from and who is really behind it,” Kruglova says.
“In my opinion, this particular campaign doesn’t probably come from terrorist groups or extremist groups. It’s probably coming from someone pretending to be a member of a terrorist group or extremist group to make it look scarier and more disruptive.”
The use of names of real groups such as Male State or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is intended to give threats the appearance of more credibility, she says, “to intimidate the public, to produce chaos”.
[ Bomb threats to Irish media linked to pattern of 'hybrid attacks'Opens in new window ]
Source: The Irish Times · Naomi O’Leary
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