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Russians were warned to rush to their nearest nuclear bomb shelters and take anti-radiation pills on Thursday after hackers took over state media.
Television and radio broadcasts in Moscow and the Sverdlovsk region were briefly interrupted with a message warning of an atomic missile strike on Russian soil.
Viewers and listeners were told to take potassium iodide, put on gas masks and seek shelter immediately.
The Russian emergencies ministry blamed the false alarm on a massive cyber attack against state broadcasters.
Those watching on television were presented with a map of Russia slowly being covered in red, from west to east, while the sound of an air raid siren was blasted out of their speakers.
“Urgent message. There was a strike,” warned a Russian voice.
“Urgently go to a shelter. Seal the premises. Use gas masks of all types.”
After the message was broadcast, screens displayed a black and yellow radiation warning symbol.
Series of stunts
The warning was the third time Russian broadcasters had been targeted with similar stunts in the past month.
“A false air raid alert was broadcast in Moscow after servers of radio stations and TV channels were hacked,” said the emergencies ministry in a statement.
The Telegraph could not immediately verify the reports that originated in Russia.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, though a number of cyber hacks targeting Russia have been carried out by pro-Ukranian groups.
Last month, Russian regional broadcasters put out a false warning urging people to take shelter from an incoming missile attack.
The messages were broadcast into Crimea, the peninsula illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014, the Ria Novosti news agency reported.
At the time, Russian state media blamed Ukraine for the messages.
A week earlier, a similar warning was broadcast across radio stations and websites run by Russia's state television conglomerate during Vladimir Putin's annual state of the nation address.
Some commentators suggested they could have been false flag attempts by the Kremlin to prepare Russians for an escalation in the conflict in Ukraine.
Kyiv has never taken responsibility for any of the alleged cyber attacks on Russian broadcasters.
Russian state-sponsored hackers have repeatedly targeted Ukrainian government and financial websites with so-called denial of service attacks, in a bid to wreak further havoc on the war-torn country.
In recent weeks, threat intelligence firms have warned that Moscow is likely to escalate its cyber attacks after malicious hacks were largely fought off by Kyiv.