Bomb hoaxes that grounded flights across Europe, including three from the UK, bear the hallmarks of state actors like Russia or Iran, aviation security experts said.
It comes as a new intelligence assessment warned Russian-linked sabotage on the continent is likely to increasingly target aviation, including hybrid attacks that endanger lives.
On Tuesday, seven planes carrying hundreds of passengers, were the target of hoax bomb threats, fuelling suspicions of a co-ordinated plot to disrupt flights.
One intelligence expert told The i Paper that the threats “fit in perfectly within the narrative of hybrid warfare” and matches the “modus operandi” of how Russia operates.
Last month, a Russia-focused report by risk intelligence firm Osavul, which tracks global hybrid threats and supplies technology to Nato, said aviation “is where Europe’s hybrid threats now meet”.
It highlighted incendiary parcels at an air-cargo hub, satellite-navigation jamming, smuggling balloons from Belarus that sparked a nationwide emergency and hundreds of disrupted flights, drones over airports and an explosive drone that targeted Leipzig airport.
The report found there were no Russian-linked aviation incidents in Europe in 2022 and 2023. But in 2025-26, half of the hybrid threats in which Russia was suspected involved aviation.
A police officer and a sniffer dog inspect a Ryanair airplane and its baggage after a bomb threat during the flight from Manchester to Murcia (Photo: Forta/ Reuters)The ‘gig economy saboteurs’
Around 95 per cent of identified perpetrators were ordinary citizens hired for money and often recruited online.
Searches of the planes hit by this week’s hoaxes found no viable devices and there was no immediate claim of responsibility.
Eric Schouten, an aviation security expert from Dyami and former Dutch intelligence liaison officer, told The i Paper, said the hoaxes “fit in perfectly within the narrative of hybrid warfare”.
While he said the threats could be down to someone motivated by a grudge against an airline, he added: “If you look at the modus operandi and disruption, this does fit in with how state actors like Russia work at the moment.” he told The i Paper.
“Calling up the disposable agents basically and saying, hey, let’s disrupt aviation and can you make fake calls. You get 50 euros or 100 euros, and they don’t even know that they’re doing it for Russia.”
Amid growing concern over the threat from hybrid attacks by state actors, he added it is only “a matter of when” civilians are killed.
“If you start sabotaging railway systems, airport systems, food systems, medical systems, people will die,” he said.
On Monday, a Wizzair plane from Luton to Sofia was diverted to Budapest due to a bomb threat.
The next day, a flight from Heathrow to Warsaw and one from Manchester to Murcia were among seven planes searched in what Downing Street called “malicious hoaxes”.
Exploding parcels
Professor Anthony Glees, a security expert at Buckingham University, said it is “possible” Iran could be behind the “systematically organised hoaxes, my own thought is that with a probability that borders on certainty they have been orchestrated by the Kremlin”.
He said the “tools” used to oversee such attacks are likely the Russian military intelligence services, the GRU, alongside the people it pays to carry out attacks and “whose existence the Russians can claim they have no knowledge of are the Kremlin’s tools here”.
Russia’s military intelligence service is also suspected to be behind a series of self-igniting parcel fires that targeted the UK and Europe in 2024, including one that exploded in Birmingham after arriving in the UK by air.
Western officials believe the huge blaze it sparked at an industrial estate near the M6 was caused by an incendiary device inside a package disguised as an electric massage machine being sent from Lithuania to the US or Canada.
A second device ignited at a DHL logistics hub in Leipzig. Security officials believe both were part of a covert operation to load them onto cargo or passenger planes.
Meanwhile, Russian independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta Europe identified at least 49 suspicious drone sightings between August and early November 2025, with 23 of the incidents near airports.
Last September, Munich Airport was closed for two days due to unconfirmed drone sightings, with more than 10,000 passengers stranded and dozens of flights affected.
‘Violence for hire’
Security experts told The i Paper that the apparent coordination of the bomb hoax threats aligns with recent suspected ploys by both Russia and Iran to use “violence for hire” tactics to cause major disruption to Europe.
Such tactics involve spymasters using a series of proxies, each thousands of miles apart, to find candidates for recruitment. These operatives are less capable than their traditional predecessors, but are easier to find in significant numbers and can be trained and deployed by hostile states.
“The dispersed nature of these apparently hoax threats might suggest they are the co-ordinated acts of a hostile state seeking to disrupt Europe’s civil aviation,” said Rob Jordan, director of proliferation and nuclear policy, at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).
“Engineering such a wave of threats would be an attractive proposition for a hostile state recruiting individuals across secure messaging platforms, with apparently well-evidenced allegations against Russia and Iran over recent months of having used or attempted to use ‘violence for hire’ networks on multiple occasions.”
But he said airports involved have advanced aviation security measures that make the chances of a viable explosive device posing a threat to aircraft exceedingly low.
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