Bomb scare, a refrigerator at fifty degrees, but only whispers about Moscow

The Russian far-right Male State movement denies having any connection to the bomb threats across Europe that led to diverted flights, scrambled fighter jets, and, by Friday, even evacuated newsrooms. The same week, food had to be thrown out in eight European countries because someone remotely turned up the temperature in store refrigerators. Meanwhile, the Pentagon warned several allies to tone down their rhetoric when talking about Russia.

On Thursday morning, the operator of Rome's airports received a letter written in flawless Italian, whose senders identified themselves as fighters of the Male State and claimed to have planted bombs on two planes bound for Italy. They said they wanted to punish the Italian "feminist regime," though the sender's address appeared to belong to Bogotá's public health authority. One of the planes was diverted to France, while the other was escorted to Rome by Italian fighter jets. No explosives were found on board either aircraft, but whoever sent the letter still managed to disrupt the schedules of two airliners and an air force with a single message.

A Telegram account linked to the group essentially replied to the BBC's Russian service that the Male State hasn't existed for years, and asked whether they'd get a call too if someone wrote a similar letter in Putin's name tomorrow. Vladislav Pozdnyakov, founder of the misogynistic movement banned in Russia in 2021, also denied the group's involvement to Reuters. Meanwhile, on Friday, a Wizz Air flight from Prague landed in Venice instead of Rome, Hungary's air force scrambled fighter jets three times, and Irish public broadcasting temporarily suspended its programming. In a letter sent to Ireland's RTÉ and Bulgaria's Nova TV, a man calling himself Mikhail Andropov claimed responsibility for the threats disrupting air traffic. It is not yet known whether he was also behind the earlier letters.

In Sjöbo, Sweden, shopkeepers faced a very different kind of alarm on Monday morning. According to supermarket chain ICA, someone had set their refrigerators and freezers to fifty degrees overnight, so instead of opening for business, staff spent the morning sorting through and throwing out the goods. Reuters reported on eight affected countries, and France's health ministry said the cooling systems of three regional blood banks were attacked the same night. There, staff managed to move the blood supplies in time. Two pro-Russian hacker groups, NoName057(16) and the Z-Pentest Alliance, claimed to have jointly hacked into the technology of Danfoss, a manufacturer of cooling controllers. According to Irish public media, no independent source has yet confirmed the two groups' role in the store attacks.

At the Pentagon, meanwhile, the view was that the Balts are speaking too loudly: Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon's under secretary of defense for policy, complained in one conversation that European leaders were comparing Russia to a cornered rat, while the same U.S. administration has been trying to persuade Ukraine to stop attacking Russian energy infrastructure. In other words, the Balts should mind Moscow's sensitivities in their statements, and the Ukrainians should mind them when choosing their targets. The EU did extend sanctions in October over Russia's destabilizing operations, but it is far harder to reach a common position on whether Europe should also respond to proven attacks with cyber operations of its own — even though that is exactly the question at stake when a letter forces fighter jets into the air, or when blood supplies have to be rescued from a hacked refrigerator a continent away. How much longer do we think Ukraine will hold back Russia indefinitely, at the cost of its own losses, while we merely deflect whatever gets through and take care not to offend anyone in Moscow?

Frenzy