Men accused of being approached by Russian contact to attack Starmer-linked assets

LONDON (AP) — A British court was told Wednesday how three men from Ukraine and Romania were offered payment by a Russian-speaking contact online to set fires against two houses and a car linked to Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Prosecutor Duncan Atkinson told the court that the men — Ukrainians Roman Lavrynovych, 22, Petro Pochynok, 35 and Romanian Stanislav Carpiuc — were involved in setting the fires between May 8 and 12 in 2025.

They are accused of conspiracy to commit arson but Lavrynovych, Atkinson said, was identified by police as the man behind all the fires. He is also charged with damaging two properties by fire with intent to endanger life or being reckless as to whether life was endangered.

The men deny the charges against them. The court was not told how much money was offered or if anyone was injured in the house fires.

“Three fires in the same area within five days would be pretty unusual. However, three fires all involving property linked to the same person were beyond a coincidence,” Atkinson said.

Atkinson said a Toyota car was deliberately set on fire in the early hours of May 8 in the Kentish Town area of north London, followed by a house on May 11 and a second house on May 12.

The property fires were started with similar materials and "were set in the dead of night, when the occupants of the addresses would inevitably have been asleep,” he said, arguing that the men who set the fires must have intended to endanger the lives of the people inside.

“Why else would you set fire to the front door, blocking the residents’ escape?” Atkinson asked.

The car, he said, had once belonged to Starmer, the first house on Ellington Road was managed by a company where the prime minister had once been a director and shareholder, and the second house on Countess Road was occupied by his sister-in-law and still owned by Starmer.

The attacks against the car and houses were “planned and directed, with those involved promised payment for their participation,” Atkinson told the court. Lavrynovych was offered payment to set the fires on the messaging app Telegram by a contact using the name El Money, Atkinson said.

Atkinson told the jury it did not need to decide what motivated the defendants to carry out the alleged attacks and that it “does not matter whether they knew that the property they were targeting was connected to the prime minister or whether that formed part of their motivation.”

The court heard how more than 320 messages dating back to September 2024 were recovered between Lavrynovych and El Money, but Atkinson told the jury that they were not to concern themselves with who El Money was and why they decided to recruit people for attacks.