photo: lviv city council
8 February, at about 7:00 p.m., the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) in the Lviv Region received an anonymous message about the «mining» of all schools and kindergartens in Lviv. Some educational institutions that are still checking for explosives will work remotely today. This information was reported in the Lviv City Council’s Department of Education.
Last month, Ukraine’s SBU reported that the increasing number of recent bomb threats against schools and shopping centers was the work of Russian Federation,trying to shake up the situation in Ukraine from within. The agency suggests that Moscow has lured hooligans into sending these messages through software that promises anonymity.
Read more: «Putin is Rattling Nerves of Americans and Europeans, Not Ukrainians.»
According to the Ukrainian state media Suspilne (Public), the number of pseudo-mining in Ukraine tripled since 2014. Bohdan Petrenko, Deputy Director of the Ukrainian Institute for the Study of Extremism, claims that this is an element of Russia’s hybrid war against Ukraine.
«Russia is launching such waves of pseudo-mining over Ukraine. It doesn’t scare people, it annoys locals when they can’t get to work, or to the other end of town to pick up a child from school or kindergarten. It also annoys people when shoppers are evacuated because of reports of pseudo-domination. In particular, it causes negativity to law enforcement officers,» Petrenko said.
In total, there are about 340 educational buildings in Lviv. As of the morning of 9 February, law enforcement agencies had inspected 65 schools, 152 kindergartens, and 12 shopping malls. No explosives were found there. Surveys are underway in other schools and kindergartens.
The city department of education noted that yesterday, the heads of educational institutions, both municipal and private, were informed about the mine. As a result, schools and kindergartens that have already been inspected went to school today. At the same time, the educational institutions where the relevant services operate do not work today, as parents and children have been warned.
Read also: Ukraine: Russia is behind fake bomb threats at Lviv schools. Video
The police told Lviv Now that the investigation is still ongoing today. Law enforcement officers are identifying the person who provided information about the mine.
We will remind that on 7 February, policemen looked for explosives in three shopping and entertainment centres in Lviv. Also last week, police received an anonymous report that several streets had been mined.
As SBU reported on its Facebook page, «The goal of the aggressor country’s special services is obvious – to create conditions for additional pressure on Ukraine, to sow anxiety and panic in society».
As we wrote earlier, during the past two weeks, there were reports of pseudo-mining in several regions of Ukraine, in particular, Sloviansk in the Donetsk region (25 January), Zaporizhia, Cherkasy, Poltava, Odesa, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Zhytomyr (24 January), Lysychansk and Severodonetsk in the Luhansk region (13 January), Kropyvnytskyi in the Kirovohrad region (27, 25, 13 January).
We will add that on 12 January, an anonymous person from Kyiv messaged Lviv police that all schools in the city had been mined. After that, the city received two more reports of mines in two hypermarkets. 18 January, the law enforcement agencies were looking for an explosive in the lyceum in the Sykhiv district of the city. The day before that, Lviv reported that the College of Technology of Lviv Polytechnic National University had been mined. Another report of mines in all schools was received on 21 January.
Translated by Vitalii Holich
You can read a Ukrainian language version of this story here.
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Lviv Now is an English-language website for Lviv, Ukraine’s «tech-friendly cultural hub.» It is produced by Tvoe Misto («Your City») media-hub, which also hosts regular problem-solving public forums to benefit the city and its people.
