After hoaxes to flights, newsrooms in Bulgaria and Ireland get threats

Newsrooms in Ireland and Bulgaria received emailed bomb threats Friday from a purported "Mikhail Andropov", claiming responsibility for a widening wave of hoax threats disrupting passenger flights across Europe. The messages, sent to Bulgaria's Nova TV and the Irish public broadcaster RTE, which evacuated its offices and suspended programming, were headlined "Message to the West" and portrayed the threats as the prelude to a series of attacks on means of transport across Europe. The British broadcaster Sky also said it had received a security threat. Reuters was not able to establish the identity of the sender, the origin of the emails, or whether they had in fact come from the same source as the threats to any or all of the dozens of flights affected since Tuesday. But they added to concern among European officials that the hoaxes are part of a campaign of "hybrid" disruptions, which many have blamed on Russia, aimed at countries that have helped Ukraine. Moscow has denied involvement. Spanish foreign minister Jose Manuel Albares said Europe appeared to be facing "hybrid aggression and a form of psychological warfare". Around half a dozen flights were disrupted in some way Tuesday and more than two dozen Thursday. On Friday, an Italian airport authority source said a Wizz Air flight from Prague to Rome had been diverted to Venice but, despite more than a dozen hoax threats, overall there was far less direct disruption to air travel. Hungarian jets did, however, escort airliners flying from Brussels to Sofia and from Prague to Bucharest and Cyprus through Hungarian airspace. Defence minister Romulusz Ruszin-Szendi said Nato had ordered some air patrols in the area, the first report that the Western defence alliance had become involved.