At about 10 a.m. on September 12, the Mash Telegram channel said that unknown persons reported seven bombs planted in schools and gymnasiums in Perm, and eleven shopping centers, a railway station and the city administration building were evacuated in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Mash also noted that on the eve of such threats were recorded in Chelyabinsk and Ufa, and on September 10 - in Sterlitamak.

It is known about the evacuation of people in more than ten cities of Russia

A wave of calls with messages about mining swept through Vladivostok, Chelyabinsk, Krasnoyarsk, Norilsk, Yekaterinburg, Magadan, Perm, Stavropol, Ufa, Bryansk, Ryazan, Omsk and Novosibirsk. As a result, emergency services evacuated schools and universities, shopping centers, administrative buildings, as well as various transport facilities.

Information about the epidemic of threats was partially denied

Employees of the operational services commented extremely sparingly on what was happening - the information was mainly provided by various sources. In some cities and regions of the country, a surge in telephone terrorism was not recorded.

Three sources in law enforcement agencies immediately stated that the operational services of Saratov did not receive warnings about terrorist threats on September 12.

A similar refutation was made by representatives of the Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Udmurtia and the Astrakhan police.

Kommersant noted that as of 14:00 in messages regional offices six regions of the Black Earth region - Voronezh, Belgorod, Lipetsk, Kursk, Oryol and Tambov regions- there is no data on the evacuation of public buildings due to reports of allegedly planted bombs.

In Moscow, the situation remains calm

A source in law enforcement that mass hysteria did not affect the capital.

“In Moscow, on average, 10-15 (in Russia - 100-120) reports about the mining of social, commercial and educational facilities are recorded daily. As of 15:00 (September 12), not a single such case has been registered in Moscow, yesterday there were only three,” the source said.

Mass evacuation was officially confirmed only in Perm

Officially, the attacks of telephone terrorists were confirmed only in the Ministry of Territorial Security of the Perm Territory.

“On September 12, 2017, from 11:10 to 11:26, 7 schools in the city of Perm and administrative buildings received anonymous calls about planted explosive devices. Within 30 minutes from the moment the information was received, students and staff were evacuated from educational institutions. A total of 5,706 people were evacuated. Currently, the buildings are being inspected by the operational services of the Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Perm region and the National Guard with the use of search dogs. Students of the first and second shifts, accompanied by their parents and relatives, were sent home,” the ministry said in a statement.

Hysteria in the media can provoke new calls

“The security forces do not like to publicly comment on messages about bomb threats, since any mention of them causes a “imitation effect” - immediately after publication, a wave of calls with similar content falls to the operational services. In general, according to experts, all calls with threats of explosions are made by people with at least an upset psyche, ”a law enforcement source explained to Lente.ru.

False threats will cost dearly

Today, the detained telephone terrorists in the framework of criminal cases under article 207 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Knowingly false report of an act of terrorism”) are being filed by the authorities with civil claims - a demand to reimburse the costs of field trips of operational services. So, the duty of an ambulance brigade in response to the threat of an explosion in Moscow is estimated at 3800 rubles, the departure of a cynologist with a dog is about 4.5 thousand. In general, all the work of specialists in checking information about the mining of one object costs about 18 thousand rubles per false call.

Concerning criminal liability, then telephone terrorists face up to five years in prison, but more often the courts apply fines - up to 200 thousand rubles. If the telephone terrorist is a schoolboy, his parents pay the money.

The director of the FSB of Russia, Alexander Bortnikov, said that the organizers of large-scale mining of buildings throughout the country had been identified. We are talking about four Russians who are now abroad. According to Kommersant, the participants in the investigation suspect that supporters of the Islamic State (IS; banned in Russia) are behind the unprecedented action.

According to Mr. Bortnikov, the organizers of the action were four citizens of the Russian Federation who are now abroad. Inside Russia they had accomplices. The attackers used IP-telephony to send messages about mining. Breaking through the calls, the security forces found out that they were coming from at least several dozen countries. Having requested help from the intelligence services of other states, the FSB officers were able to clarify exactly where the attackers were. According to some reports, some of the calls came from Belgium. However, due to certain difficulties in the negotiations and the duration of the transfer of requests between law enforcement agencies, no one has yet been detained.

The FSB director did not specify whether the suspects are members of any terrorist group. According to Kommersant's sources, the investigation is inclined to believe that they could be supporters of ISIS banned in Russia. Moreover, the attack launched by the extremists was developed due to the fact that so-called imitators decided to participate in it - mostly underage hooligans and inadequate people.

At the same time, it should be noted that in Russia, separate criminal cases were initiated for each fact of telephone mining. Subsequently, in each region they were merged. For example, in Moscow, a criminal case is now being investigated about almost 200 reports of planted bombs, because of which several hundred thousand people had to be evacuated. These are mainly students of schools and institutes, patients of hospitals and visitors to other social institutions. The fact is that in accordance with the law, when receiving threats from such institutions, evacuation is carried out without fail. At the same time, visitors to business centers, for example, are taken outside if their security service cannot guarantee that a real explosion will not follow a call about a supposedly planted bomb.

Alexander Bortnikov estimated the damage from such evacuations at 300 million rubles.

From Islamists to Ukrainians

The FSB opened a criminal case on all these facts under Art. 207 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (knowingly false report about an act of terrorism). This was told to RBC by a source in the FSB. The department, whose scope of activity includes the investigation of "telephone cases", joined the investigation into the massive threats of mining, the interlocutor of RBC noted. This department appeared in the structure of the FSB in 2011.

The main version of the investigation was a planned attack using IP telephony, says a RBC source familiar with the activities of this department of the FSB. He said that the attackers used the peculiarities of the IP connection. “The anonymity of the call is ensured by the fact that an attacker, using IP telephony, can substitute any number of the caller, including the numbers of real uninvolved subscribers from anywhere in the world. This possibility of IP-telephony complicates the work of the security forces. The connection of the IP telephony voice gateway to the networks of telecom operators often occurs illegally, with the substitution of the caller's number, IP addresses and other identifiers, ”RBC’s interlocutor explained.

The operatives have several working versions of who might be behind the phone threats, the source said. According to one of them, the chain of servers investigated by operatives leads to the territory of Ukraine. “Anonymous calls about supposedly planted bombs are interconnected things, a continuation of the same planned attack inflicted from the territory of a neighboring state,” another source close to law enforcement agencies told RBC.

Another version that the FSB is developing is that a wave of calls in Russia with threats of mines were initiated from abroad by unknown people associated with the Islamic State (a terrorist organization that is banned in Russia), RIA Novosti reported.

The former head of the public relations center of the FSB of Russia, Alexander Mikhailov, in a conversation with RBC, did not agree with the version of the foreign trace. “It all started with ordinary hooliganism, then turned into a massive flash mob, and then into a terrorist threat,” said a retired FSB major general. “Mass calls paralyze work power structures, enterprises, stores, cinemas and so on. The problem needs to be analyzed comprehensively, but I am not a supporter of conspiracy theories and assumptions that ISIS or the special services of Ukraine are behind this, ”says Mikhailov.

The bulk of calls - about 90% - were centralized, RBC source in the FSB. The rest of the calls, he emphasizes, differed in their type and portrait of the callers. “Specialists made such a conclusion after a phonetic examination. Part of the calls came from teenagers, as well as from people with an unbalanced psyche, ”says the interlocutor.

On Thursday, it became known that FSB officers had identified the source of the calls in the regions, a source close to the service told RBC. In the near future, the search for those suspected of telephone terrorism will be announced, the interlocutor stressed. Another source close to the FSB told RBC that the FSB had found the suspects. Who is suspected of organizing mass calls about planted bombs, the interlocutors did not say. Nor did they say which country the telephone terrorists were citizens of.

In the phase of depression

Psychologists believe that the time of year also played a role in the mass reports of bombs. The first wave of false reports about the mining of administrative buildings, shopping centers and train stations was picked up by teenagers who began to report the "mining" of schools, psychologist, doctor of medical sciences Mikhail Baryshev suggests in a conversation with RBC.

“A large number of media reports fell on fertile ground,” psychologist Sergei Nurislamov told RBC, “This is due to autumn depressive reactions. Students do not want to be involved in studying proccess, and here they get a ready-made solution on how to cancel classes.

Calls about mining urban objects throughout Russia have been going on for two days. The first reports of planted bombs were received by the Omsk police on Sunday evening, September 10, and continued to be received until Monday evening. After the calls, cinemas and several large shopping centers, two schools, the city hall building, and everything else were evacuated. A total of 24 facilities were evacuated and inspected.

In Bryansk, the first calls with reports of bombs began to arrive at the police around 20:00 on Monday. As a result, people were evacuated from many shopping centers and malls: the Europa hypermarket and the Timoshkovykh, Aeropark and BOOM City shopping centers, all the Liniya and Metro hypermarkets.

In Stavropol, on Monday morning, a telephone terrorist reported mining 15 facilities, including several universities, schools, a clinic, a railway station, a city administration, a regional center, a shopping center and a market.

Later, information appeared that the prosecutor's office of Stavropol opened a criminal case after reports of bombs planted in 42 institutions of the regional capital.

In Chelyabinsk on Monday evening, due to bomb calls, about a dozen large shopping malls, several hotels and restaurants were evacuated and checked. People were evacuated, including from the Rodnik, Gagarin Park, Almaz, Ural, Fiesta and Slava shopping malls in Kopeysk.

In Yekaterinburg city police officers and Sverdlovsk region they are looking for an anonymous person, because of whose calls the building of the Southern Bus Station, the Northern Bus Station, the Greenwich Shopping Center and the Marshall Business Center were evacuated on September 11.

The Sedanka-City shopping center and the Cheryomushki shopping and entertainment center were evacuated, where the pre-premiere screening of the film Matilda had taken place the day before.

During the day on Tuesday in Vladivostok, six student dormitories, seven shopping centers, a bus station, the Primorsky Regional Court, the administration building of the Primorsky Territory, the building of the Pacific State Medical University and the City Council of Vladivostok were also evacuated.

According to the Vladivostok publication VL.ru, calls about planted bombs come from abroad through an automatic dialer with one prepared phrase about the bomb, in which only the addresses of objects change.

In Magadan, visitors to two cinemas, a market, as well as several schools and the Polytechnic Institute were evacuated on Tuesday. The buildings were "mined" with a difference of several minutes. The press service of the Russian Guard in the Magadan region reported that, as signals are received, employees are checking with the help of a canine service.

In Perm, as a result of calls that began on Tuesday morning, about 6,000 people were evacuated. According to local media, several shopping and entertainment centers, the bus station building, the Perm-2 railway station, the campus of the Permsky state university, 10 schools and a residential building. Classes were canceled in all Perm schools and PSNIU. A total of 78 buildings were checked for bombs.

In Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk on Tuesday morning, anonymous calls were recorded about mining 13 buildings - eleven shopping centers (including Sakhalin, Orbita, Aist, Plaza, Slavyansky and City Mall), as well as buildings city ​​hall and train station. All visitors were also evacuated by the security services and the police.

So far, no explosive devices have been found. All “mined” places are checked by cynologists with dogs.

Knowingly false information about an act of terrorism, about an impending explosion, arson or other actions that create a danger of death of people, and that caused major damage or the onset of other grave consequences, according to Article 207 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, is punishable by a fine in the amount of up to one million rubles or in the amount of wages or other income of the convicted person for a period of eighteen months to three years, or by deprivation of liberty for a term of up to five years. Large-scale damage in this article is recognized damage, the amount of which exceeds one million rubles.