Russia-linked arson attacks show bad actors targeting UK, says Starmer

The trial of two Russian-linked arsonists who targeted property connected to Keir Starmer shows that the UK is under attack from bad actors who want to “exploit division” and “destabilise our democracy”, the prime minister has said.Roman Lavrynovych, 22, from Ukraine, and Stanislav Carpiuc, 27, from Romania, were found guilty on Monday of conspiring to carry out arson attacks on property linked to the prime minister, and appear to have operated under the instruction of an online handler with links to Russia.Speaking at the G7 in Évian-les-Bains, France, on Wednesday, Starmer said the attack on the house had “clearly impacted and affected my family”.Lavrynovych and Carpiuc will be sentenced on Friday. Their co-defendant, Petro Pochynok, 35, was cleared. Lavrynovych was also convicted of damaging two properties by fire, being reckless as to whether life was endangered, on 11 and 12 May last year.The sentencing comes during a period of heightened tension between Russia and the UK. On Sunday a Russian shadow fleet vessel containing 98,000 tonnes of oil was intercepted by British troops in the Channel, and on Tuesday a Russian warship fired warning shots at a British-flagged yacht.Starmer said the warning shots were “deeply concerning and reckless”, and said the UK was dealing with proxy attacks from Russia “every single day”.The prime minister made the comments on the sidelines of this week’s G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains in France. Photograph: Isabel Infantes/PACentral to the arson case was a Russian-speaking Telegram contact using the pseudonym “El Money” who allegedly ordered the attacks and communicated in Russian with Lavrynovych as early as September 2024.“There’s one winner in this case: the anonymous devil who manipulated, used and won,” James Scobie KC, representing Lavrynovych, told the court in closing remarks. Saying little was known about him, he added: “But Russia – let’s call it out – Russia are interested in what this country does in support of Ukraine. This person, or people, spoke excellent Russian,” said Scobie.Some security sources had said that an outlandish and false theory that emerged after the attack – that the defendants were aggrieved sex workers who torched Starmer’s home because they had not been paid – could have been created by far-right figures in the UK and amplified by hostile Russian agents.Asked if he was concerned that the conspiracy theory – which was spread by figures such as Tommy Robinson – suggested that some elements of the far right were acting, inadvertently or otherwise, as de-facto Russian agents, Starmer said: “There are many actors who want to divide our country and to cause conflict in our country.”“Some of the evidence that came out of trial speaks for itself, but there are wider issues here,” he added. “We see this the whole time.”He accused politicians and other “actors” in the UK of being “more than happy to indulge in tearing our country apart”, adding that there were also “those from outside our country who are trying to find ways to exploit division in our country to destabilise our democracy”.Starmer added: “[W]e need to be really clear in relation to that and we need to fight it at every twist and every turn.”Earlier at the summit, Starmer said the attack on the property needed to be seen in the “broader context” of Russia’s war in Ukraine. The prime minister, who announced new sanctions on Russia to target finance networks and expand the number of vessels targeted as part of Moscow’s shadow fleet carrying oil or liquified natural gas to more than 600, said there was a “mood change” in the debate about Ukraine.Investigations by the BBC and the Financial Times have linked Russia to the arson attacks on the house connected to the prime minister. The FT found that Telegram archives, cryptocurrency wallets, court evidence and interviews with western officials established that El Money was located in Russia and was closely aligned with NoName057(16), a pro-Kremlin hacktivist group that the US has called a Russian “state-sanctioned project”.