On 18 December 2023, the online publication Dnipro Operatyvnyi said that it had received several emails over the past days on alleged explosive devices planted at the media outlet’s editorial office in the city of Dnipro. The incidents were reported by Olesya Antoshkina, the editor-in-chief of Dnipro Operativniy, who spoke to a regional representative of the Institute of Mass Information (IMI), a Ukrainian press freedom monitoring group. According to Antoshkina, information about the alleged bombs were sent to the publication on December 15, 16 and 17. Additionally, in a Facebook post on December 14, Dnipro Operatyvnyi’s editor-in-chief reported on two consecutive incidents of the same type on that day.
“We are tired of these messages,” Antoshkina told IMI. “This time we also called the police, once [this happened] at night [and we spent] half of the night on the phone to solve [the problem]. Once again, this was a false report, but we cannot avoid calling the police [each time].”
Antoshkina claimed Russians were responsible for the false bombing messages, without explaining why she believed this was the case. Dnipro Operatyvnyi had received similar emailed messages throughout 2023.