Terrified Russian bus passengers were played a message warning of an imminent nuclear strike by pranksters. The incident in Moscow saw people on a bus ordered to run to a bomb shelter
Pranked Russian bus passengers were ordered to rush to bomb shelters because of a supposedly imminent nuclear strike by Ukraine.
In a video, a female passenger can be seen as she heard a warning on the intercom of bus 191 to Grachevskaya station in the Russian capital of Moscow. Transport officials in the city say the alarming messages followed an operation by unknown hackers.
The intercom on the bus suddenly told passengers: “Attention, attention! Ukraine is threatening us with a nuclear bombardment!” It comes after Vladimir Putin warned of nuclear war after unleashing another night of hell on Ukraine.
The message went on: “I repeat! Attention, attention! Ukraine is threatening us with a nuclear bombardment! Everyone to the shelters! Attention! Attention! Ukraine is threatening us with a nuclear bombardment!”
Ukraine does not possess any nuclear weapons. It gave them up in 1994 after agreeing to security guarantees from the US, UK, Russia, France and China.
It is not known how many buses were hit but it involved services run by the Transavtoliz company which operates hundreds of services. Amid confusion and concern from the message, the authorities rushed to assure travellers there was no need to panic from the false threat.
A Moscow transport spokesman said: “Audio messages that did not correspond to reality were played in the buses. “Currently, specialists are checking the network infrastructure and eliminating the consequences of unauthorised access.”
In Ukraine this week, President Volodymyr Zelensky. Zelensky said over the weekend that Kyiv “will not give Russia any awards for what it has done,” and that “Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier.”
The remarks came after Trump said a peace deal would involve swapping of Ukrainian territories by both sides “to the betterment of both.”
For Zelensky, such a deal could be a disaster for his presidency and spark public outcry after more than three years of bloodshed and sacrifice by Ukrainians. Moreover, he doesn’t have the authority to sign off on it, because changing Ukraine’s 1991 borders runs counter to the country’s constitution.
“There’ll be some land swapping going on,” Trump has said, however. “I know that through Russia and through conversations with everybody. To the good, for the good of Ukraine. Good stuff, not bad stuff. Also, some bad stuff for both.”
Russia currently occupies around a fifth of Ukraine including almost all of the Luhansk region and almost two-thirds of Donetsk region. Russia also partially controls more than half of the Kherson region, parts of the Zaporizhzhia region, and pockets of territory in Kharkiv and Sumy regions in northeastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian forces are still active in the Kursk region inside Russia, but they barely hold any territory there, making it not as potent a bargaining chip as Kyiv’s leaders had probably hoped when they launched the daring incursion across the border last year. Swapping Ukrainian controlled territory in Russia, however minuscule, will likely be the only palatable option for Kyiv in any land swapping scenario.incursion across the border last year. Swapping Ukrainian controlled territory in Russia, however minuscule, will likely be the only palatable option for Kyiv in any land swapping scenario.