The burning of a car on a quiet London street might have remained a routine criminal incident. A few minutes of fire, damaged property, traces of flammable liquid, police at the scene. But when, days later, the doors of homes linked to the prime minister were set alight, the episode acquired a different scale.
A London court found Roman Lavrynovych and Stanislav Carpiuc guilty of conspiracy to damage property by fire. The case involved three attacks in May 2025: the burning of a car linked to Keir Starmer and two residential properties in north London. A third defendant, Petro Pochynok, was acquitted.
The case mattered more than the financial damage. Lavrynovych, a Ukrainian working in Britain, received instructions from an anonymous Russian-language Telegram account called El Money. He was sent addresses, instructions, advice on flammable mixtures and demands for proof that the tasks had been carried out.
For Daycom, the verdict is significant not as a story about two offenders, but as an example of a new sabotage market. European capitals are increasingly confronting not the classic spy of old fiction, but a cheap, anonymous digital network in which dangerous tasks are assigned through messengers to vulnerable people.
Lavrynovych was also convicted on two counts of arson while being reckless as to whether life would be endangered. Prosecutors stressed that setting fire to the doors of occupied homes had put people inside at risk. Carpiuc’s conviction concerned his role in the wider conspiracy, which investigators described as coordinative.
What makes the case especially revealing is not only the target, but the mechanism. The person carrying out the attack did not necessarily need to understand its political meaning. Police found no proof that the defendants knew they were striking property linked to the prime minister. But for the organizers, that knowledge was central: fear was meant to reach the highest point of British power.
This is the new danger. A shadow operation can be designed so that the executor sees only payment, an address and a bottle of accelerant. The political purpose remains somewhere behind a phone screen. That distance makes the system resilient: if the person is arrested, he knows little, while the real coordinator remains out of reach.
In this story, El Money was not just an account. It was a model. It promised cryptocurrency, pressured the executor, demanded video and wanted news coverage. After the final fire, Lavrynovych was advised to leave the city. This no longer looks like a spontaneous criminal service. It resembles a low-cost influence operation in which the main product is not destroyed property, but public effect.
British prosecutors did not build the case on proving a state order or an ideological motive. The court dealt with what could be legally established: conspiracy, arson, risk to life, digital messages, locations and links between the perpetrators. That boundary between courtroom evidence and intelligence suspicion is central to the whole affair.
Europe has already seen this logic. Arson, sabotage, attacks on facilities connected to Ukraine and attempts at political interference increasingly form a pattern of small, cheap and hard-to-attribute operations. They do not require a large agent network. A few vulnerable people, an encrypted chat, a promise of money and a carefully chosen target can be enough.
Such sabotage is inexpensive, but its consequences are costly. It forces the state to spend resources, strengthen protection for politicians, explain risks to the public, examine digital channels and close gaps in security. A single fire may last only minutes, but its political shadow can remain for a long time.
The use of the Ukrainian factor is also important. The perpetrators were people with Ukrainian origins or connections to Ukraine. For an outside manipulator, this is convenient material: a strike can be aimed at a British prime minister who supports Kyiv while also planting a toxic suggestion that the Ukrainian presence itself is a source of danger.
That is not a random side effect. Anti-Ukrainian suspicion is part of the political value of such operations. If, after an arson attack, public attention shifts from the anonymous organizer to the nationality of the executor, part of the objective has already been achieved. Trust in refugees, migrant workers and support for Ukraine begins to crack where it is hardest to repair.
That is why Britain’s response must be sharper than a simple criminal formula. Yes, perpetrators must be punished. But the method also has to be named: online recruitment, cryptocurrency promises, Telegram channels, anonymous handlers and small tasks that can gradually lead to more serious crimes. Without this, society sees only fires, not the mechanism that starts them.
For Ukraine, the case is also sensitive. It shows how Russia or pro-Russian networks can use Ukrainians as disposable material in other people’s operations. A person under pressure receives a task, carries it out for promised payment, ends up in court, and the figure who turned his weakness into a political weapon remains behind the screen.
For Britain, this is a test of democratic resilience. An attack on property linked to the prime minister is not merely an attack on private ownership. It is an attempt to show that even a protected political system can be touched by the hands of random executors — not with tanks, not with missiles, but with a door set on fire at night.
In that sense, the Old Bailey verdict closes only the lower level of the case. Two men were convicted, a third was acquitted, and the legal process now moves toward sentencing. But the upper level — who stood behind El Money, how the network operated, what other tasks it may have issued — remains without a public answer.
European security will increasingly look like this: not one dramatic attack, but a sequence of small fires, strange graffiti, sabotage attempts, fake movements, proxy accounts and people who “just wanted to earn money.” The purpose of such operations is not simply to destroy a house. It is to make a democratic society nervous, suspicious and tired.
That is why the verdict in the arson case linked to Starmer matters far beyond London. It shows that hybrid warfare no longer needs a loud signature. Its trail can begin in Telegram, pass through a cheap promise of cryptocurrency and end at a burned door. The real target is not wood or metal, but the trust on which the state depends.
