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Unidentified White Powder in Envelopes the Successor to Telephone Terrorism in Russia?
[Jamestown] Since last September, more than three million Russians have been evacuated from thousands of schools, businesses, cultural facilities and government offices in cities and towns across Russia in response to anonymous bomb threats—not one of which has proven to be true but all of which have required prompt action lest lives be lost. The government-controlled media have provided only the sparsest coverage of what Russians now call “telephone terrorism,” but the problem continues to this day and is now so large that the Russian security services have launched special efforts to end it, so far without any signs of success. Moreover, the Russian parliament has now voted to impose a ten-year jail term on anyone convicted of making such false threats, although to date no one has been (For background, see Window on Eurasia, September 12, 2017; Window on Eurasia, January 2, 2018; on the efforts of the special forces and the Duma decision, see Kasparov, December 20, 2017; and on some of the most recent cases, see Politsovet, February 20).What makes telephone terrorism so frightening is that anyone with a telephone, either inside Russia or abroad, can make such a threat and force official action. Unlike most terrorist actions, no individual or group has claimed responsibility. In places where such bomb threats have been the most frequent, such as Yekaterinburg and cities in the Russian Far East, they have produced a general, if so far relatively low intensity, fear among the population. Many are taking the evacuations in stride, but the constant repetition of evacuations, even of government buildings such as the Russian Duma itself, has left people feeling uneasy. In the last several weeks, concerns about telephone terrorism have been joined by fears about the appearance of a tactic some Western countries have had experience with: the receipt by various offices and individuals of ordinary mail containing an unidentified white powder that many fear may contain anthrax or other dangerous bacteria. In the United States, the receipt of such letters has forced officials to hospitalize recipients and engage in radical decontamination efforts even, though in most cases the white powder has proven to be harmless. Now this plague has come to Russia, although so far it, unlike telephone terrorism, has been confined to the diplomatic representations in Moscow. On February 14, Interfax reported that envelopes with an unknown white substance had been delivered by mail to “at a minimum” three embassies in the Russian capital (Interfax, February 14). They were subsequently identified as those of the Netherlands, Canada and Bulgaria. According to the Russian news service, judging by the handwriting on the envelopes, the letters were all sent by a single individual. After testing, the white substance enclosed within them proved to be a harmless insecticide. Posted by: 3dc 2018-02-23 |
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