The arson of British Prime Minister Keir Starmerʼs property in May 2025 was organized by a Kremlin-linked network and the son of a Russian diplomat Yevgeny Lyukshin.
This is stated in the investigations of the Financial Times and BBC.
During the investigation, FT journalists found out that Ukrainian Roman Lavrynovych, who was found guilty of arson by a British court, was recruited via Telegram in late 2024 by a curator under the pseudonym El Money. At first, he assigned him small tasks, including putting up posters of the far-right movement Direct Action around London.
The FT claims that the Direct Action movement was effectively run by people from Russia. The group called for attacks on mosques and police cars, distributed instructions on how to make explosives and offered money for violent actions.
El Money later ordered Lavrynovych to set fire to a car previously owned by Starmer, as well as the prime ministerʼs private home and his former residence. According to the investigation, the Ukrainian was promised several thousand dollars in cryptocurrency if the arsonists received wide media coverage.
No one was killed in the attacks, but Starmerʼs relative and her nine-year-old daughter were at the home when the fire broke out. The woman called the fire department after hearing explosions and seeing smoke near the front door.
According to the FT, the curator of El Money was linked to the NoName057(16) network, which US authorities have previously called a Kremlin project. At the same time, a BBC investigation indicates that the person behind the name El Money is Yevgeny Lyukshin, 23, the son of a Russian diplomat who previously worked as an embassy counselor in Denmark.
- Yesterday, June 15, a British court found Lavrynovych and his accomplice, 27-year-old Ukrainian-born Romanian citizen Stanislav Karpiuk, guilty of arson attacks on Starmerʼs property in the spring of 2025. They will be sentenced on Friday, June 19. Another Ukrainian — 35-year-old Petro Pochynk — was acquitted.
For more news and in-depth stories from Ukraine, please follow us on X.