An email address with the Estonian domain was used to make a bomb threat to the Brodsky synagogue in Kyiv, Ukraine; people were evacuated from the temple and no explosives were found.
According to the Estonian newspaper, Postimees, the email with the bomb threat was sent from motorola_dnr_1488@mail.ee in the morning of 27 May. The email was in Russian and it said there’s a timed explosive in the synagogue building that will go off within 24 hours.
The person who sent the email also noted that another bomb was planted in a car parked near the shul. The letter ended with the word, “Seek!!!”.
The chief rabbi of Ukraine published a screenshot of the threatening email.
According to Postimees, the mail.ee environment is owned by a Latvian company; however, anyone in the world can create an email address using the platform.
The words used in the email address – “motorola” and “dnr” – hint at the area in Eastern Ukraine that is under the control of the Russian-supported separatists who call their territory the People’s Republic of Donetsk, abbreviated in Russian as DNR.
The second-largest shul on Kyiv
Motorola, according to the newspaper, was the nickname of the notorious commander of the Sparta battalion, Arsen Pavlov. He was killed in October 2016 in an explosion. The number 1488, however, is used by white supremacists.
The Brodsky Choral Synagogue is the second-largest synagogue in Kyiv. It was built between 1897 and 1898, designed by Georgiy Shleifer. In 1926, the synagogue was closed down by the Soviet authorities and it was converted into an artisan club.
The building was devastated during the Second World War by Nazis and was subsequently used as a puppet theatre. An additional facade was built in the 1970s.
In 1997, the theatre moved into a new building. The old building was renovated and, since 2000, it is again used as a synagogue.
Cover: Brodsky Synagogue in Kiev, Ukraine. Photo by Fedotto/Wikipedia, shared under the CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.
