Leningrad region governor Alexander Drozdenko said the region had been subjected to an "information terrorist attack," with bomb threat messages arriving at dozens of kindergartens, schools, hospitals and other social facilities.
Drozdenko claimed the "enemy's" goal was "to disrupt the first of September," the start of the Russian school year, "and perhaps to sow panic." Security services are checking the incoming messages.
In Moscow, the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts was temporarily closed "for technical reasons." Visitors were evacuated and tours for the coming hours were cancelled. The main building of the Museum of the East on Nikitsky Boulevard was also closed, as was the ROSIZO museum.
Earlier, authorities in the Altai region reported a wave of bomb threat messages targeting institutions there. According to the outlet Ostorozhno, Novosti, false bomb threats also arrived in the Urals, Yamal, Kazan, Transbaikalia, the Orenburg region and the Krasnoyarsk region.