L/A
An elderly man places a newspaper on an atm terminal, douses it in spirit, and sets it alight while filming it all on his smartphone. The pensioner then repeats the trick twice more on December 21st—once unsuccessfully—before police nab him in Kolpino, near St Petersburg. Within days, Alexander Nikiforov is in court and charged with terrorism. But his case, echoing dozens of similar events targeting banks, post offices and police cars the same week, has raised more questions than it has answered. Mr Nikiforov claims he was acting not from conviction, but under the instructions of unidentified telephone scammers.
It is not the first time Russia has experienced arson attacks since beginning its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In the first year of the war, military recruitment offices and police departments were frequent targets. According to a forthcoming investigation by Mediazona, an independent Russian media outfit, there have been 280 arson attacks to date. But if the early wave of attacks were easily identifiable as anti-war or anti-mobilisation protests, that is no longer the case. The latest attacks, which peaked in the second half of December, appear more driven by manipulation and coercion. The perpetrators, often pensioners like Mr Nikiforov, claim to have been tricked into transferring large sums of cash, before somehow being persuaded they must burn atms to recover the money.
Russia is blaming Ukraine for the unusual campaign, citing both motive and means. On the latter point, Ukraine is somewhat of a world-leader in the phone scamming industry, with hundreds of murky call-centres operating from cities such as Kyiv and Dnipro. Since Russia began its original war on Ukraine in 2014, and Ukrainian law-enforcement agencies broke off all co-operation with Russia, Russian citizens have been prime targets of the criminal activity. Ukraine’s bilingualism and Russia’s high level of corruption, leading to masses of data being put up for sale on the dark net, have made it a lucrative business.
A Ukrainian law-enforcement source says such call-centres may have played a role in the latest wave of attacks. “They have skilled psychologists who can manipulate the vulnerable,” he says. “They are mainly motivated by cash, but they may occasionally serve the fatherland too.” Some sources within the intelligence agencies, however, claim more direct ownership of the operation. “Ukraine’s special services are at work,” one of them says. “It’s a routine operation.” The same source downplayed the suggestion that Russia’s arsonists did not know what they were doing. “When people are caught, they say anything, they drank something, were fed something, or were injected with something. But you can get a grandmother to throw a Molotov cocktail into a military office or wherever you want—if your price is right.”
The traffic is not just one-way. In the past year Russian intelligence has almost certainly used similar methods to conduct out an arms-length arson campaign against Ukrainian military vehicles. According to Ukraine’s police service, 341 vehicles were set alight in 2024 alone. The Ukrainian law-enforcement source says the perpetrators were mostly gullible, rather than ideologically driven. More often than not, they were motivated by promises of up to $1,000, cash that was rarely delivered. A total of 184 were charged.
Russian authorities have wasted little time in responding to the apparent Ukrainian operation. Little over a week after it in effect blocked YouTube, thus creating a firewall around any source that is not Russian propaganda, the Kremlin announced it would also ban internet telephony. But this possible recognition that some of Russia’s pensioner arsonists might have fallen victim to sophisticated manipulation is unlikely to help them in court. Only 0.26% of those charged are ever acquitted. Mr Nikiforov and the hundreds like him to be charged with terror crimes thus have little chance of avoiding a serious custodial sentence. “It’s impossible to defend people in Russia,” says Dmitry Zakhvatov, a lawyer, “whether they are scammed or not.” ■
An elderly man places a newspaper on an atm terminal, douses it in spirit, and sets it alight while filming it all on his smartphone. The pensioner then repeats the trick twice more on December 21st—once unsuccessfully—before police nab him in Kolpino, near St Petersburg. Within days, Alexander Nikiforov is in court and charged with terrorism. But his case, echoing dozens of similar events targeting banks, post offices and police cars the same week, has raised more questions than it has answered. Mr Nikiforov claims he was acting not from conviction, but under the instructions of unidentified telephone scammers.
It is not the first time Russia has experienced arson attacks since beginning its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In the first year of the war, military recruitment offices and police departments were frequent targets. According to a forthcoming investigation by Mediazona, an independent Russian media outfit, there have been 280 arson attacks to date. But if the early wave of attacks were easily identifiable as anti-war or anti-mobilisation protests, that is no longer the case. The latest attacks, which peaked in the second half of December, appear more driven by manipulation and coercion. The perpetrators, often pensioners like Mr Nikiforov, claim to have been tricked into transferring large sums of cash, before somehow being persuaded they must burn atms to recover the money.
Russia is blaming Ukraine for the unusual campaign, citing both motive and means. On the latter point, Ukraine is somewhat of a world-leader in the phone scamming industry, with hundreds of murky call-centres operating from cities such as Kyiv and Dnipro. Since Russia began its original war on Ukraine in 2014, and Ukrainian law-enforcement agencies broke off all co-operation with Russia, Russian citizens have been prime targets of the criminal activity. Ukraine’s bilingualism and Russia’s high level of corruption, leading to masses of data being put up for sale on the dark net, have made it a lucrative business.
A Ukrainian law-enforcement source says such call-centres may have played a role in the latest wave of attacks. “They have skilled psychologists who can manipulate the vulnerable,” he says. “They are mainly motivated by cash, but they may occasionally serve the fatherland too.” Some sources within the intelligence agencies, however, claim more direct ownership of the operation. “Ukraine’s special services are at work,” one of them says. “It’s a routine operation.” The same source downplayed the suggestion that Russia’s arsonists did not know what they were doing. “When people are caught, they say anything, they drank something, were fed something, or were injected with something. But you can get a grandmother to throw a Molotov cocktail into a military office or wherever you want—if your price is right.”
The traffic is not just one-way. In the past year Russian intelligence has almost certainly used similar methods to conduct out an arms-length arson campaign against Ukrainian military vehicles. According to Ukraine’s police service, 341 vehicles were set alight in 2024 alone. The Ukrainian law-enforcement source says the perpetrators were mostly gullible, rather than ideologically driven. More often than not, they were motivated by promises of up to $1,000, cash that was rarely delivered. A total of 184 were charged.
Russian authorities have wasted little time in responding to the apparent Ukrainian operation. Little over a week after it in effect blocked YouTube, thus creating a firewall around any source that is not Russian propaganda, the Kremlin announced it would also ban internet telephony. But this possible recognition that some of Russia’s pensioner arsonists might have fallen victim to sophisticated manipulation is unlikely to help them in court. Only 0.26% of those charged are ever acquitted. Mr Nikiforov and the hundreds like him to be charged with terror crimes thus have little chance of avoiding a serious custodial sentence. “It’s impossible to defend people in Russia,” says Dmitry Zakhvatov, a lawyer, “whether they are scammed or not.” ■
