The warnings came swiftly, targeting various airlines and airports.
At least 21 flights and several airports across Europe were hit by bomb threats on Thursday. In almost all cases – with the notable exception of London's Heathrow Airport – the threats were deemed serious enough to cause the planes involved to deviate from their routes and, in the case of Italy, even to scramble fighter jets to escort them.
In the end, all of these threats turned out to be false. However, that doesn't mean that the next threats can't be real. It's not surprising that the simultaneous and coordinated nature of these scams targeting airlines, combined with other malicious actions across Europe, is leading some to point the finger of suspicion at Russia.
Following a series of cyberattacks and mysterious drone surveillance of sensitive objects earlier this year, recent days have also seen remote intrusions into supermarket refrigeration systems and a blood bank; a suspicious incident on Poland's border with Russia; and, in August, a drone attack on Germany's Leipzig Halle airport, for which the German interior minister publicly blamed Moscow.
So, is Russia behind these events?
There are many who argue that, based on circumstantial evidence alone, this must surely be another example of what is known as “hybrid” warfare, “in the gray zone” or “below the threshold of conflict”—actions that damage a country’s infrastructure or society but are usually carried out anonymously, can be easily denied, and remain below the level that would trigger the activation of NATO’s Article 5 and, consequently, the mobilization of a response from the West.
Moscow is undoubtedly angry with NATO for its support for Ukraine and for the fact that, in doing so, it is thwarting the Kremlin’s plans to invade that country and effectively end its independence. Russian bloggers have also suggested that if Ukrainian drones are currently making Russian airports unsafe and Western sanctions are preventing Russian airlines from using European airspace, then why shouldn’t Western countries experience the same?
However, as of Thursday evening, no concrete evidence had emerged linking these false threats to airlines to Russia, Iran or any intermediary group controlled by them. On Thursday morning, airport authorities in Rome received a threatening email, which was claimed to have been sent by a group called “Fighters of the Male State.”
This name likely refers to the Russian group Muzhskoi Legion, or “Male Legion,” a far-right group with beliefs so radical that it was banned by a Moscow court in 2021. However, the group continued to have tens of thousands of online followers on the Telegram platform, while welcoming Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine the following year.
But the email sent to Rome, even if authentic – and who's to say it's not another group hiding behind this name? – is unlikely to provide the clues that police and airport authorities need to discover who is organizing these false threats and for what reason.
For national police forces, airport authorities and transport ministries, which are trying to find out who is behind these threats and how to minimise their impact when they happen again, the task is not to draw conclusions based on who they think is the most likely culprit, but to follow the concrete leads and irrefutable evidence - if they can find it./BBC
