RU Russia is being set aflame by hundreds of arson attacks - The Kremlin blames a campaign of subversion and psychological warfare

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.” ■

 

[Pluciferous]

Galactic brain take: the majority of the large-scale forest fires in the past 10 years in Canada and the USA were set by Russian arsonists. This wave of Russian arson attacks is the delightfully conceived revenge from the USA: exploiting the dumb muzhik phenomenon to get Russians to burn their own country down by calling them Pranknet style.

 

[N Space]

Russia is still at the stage of using only volunteers (and some prisoners taking a deal for reduced sentences / pardons) and whom it can afford to pay quite highly for the dangerous work.

Forgot to list foreign soldiers:

 

[Snekposter]

I mean, that would be a lot closer to going all in. Ukraine has had three rounds of mobilisation, forcibly abducting large numbers of people right off the street to send to the front, to the extent they're making heavy use of barrier troops (loyalists behind the front line to shoot people retreating) and are currently under pressure to lower the conscription age to 18. A consideration taken seriously enough to cause large numbers of parents to be fleeing over the border with their teenage kids. As you say, Russia is still at the stage of using only volunteers (and some prisoners taking a deal for reduced sentences / pardons) and whom it can afford to pay quite highly for the dangerous work.

I wasn't trying to make some grand point. I'm just tired of the hyperbole and attempts by NAFO types and the media in general to suggest Russia is struggling. The Ukranian soldiers have often fought like tigers (their senior leadership are mostly idiots, though) but Russia is still clearly fighting with one hand here. It's not just a matter of how many troops are committed, either. It's a matter of tactics. Russia has been content to play this very conservatively. They could missile strike a lot more of Kiev or Lvov if they chose to. Russia is trying to use their military power to put on political pressure as much as territory. Which makes sense because their strategic goal isn't really land or natural resources. They have both in abundance, they're Russia. It's security. And for that they're going to need political buy-in which gets harder when you flatten cities far from the actual battle front for the sake of it.

I can't give you a precise answer on at what point I'd say Russia is going "all in" because I haven't decided for myself what that would be. But I think I can argue credibly that Russia is far from it. Ukraine on the other hand, is a lot lot closer to that point. The media should stop trying to portray the situation as other than it is.

Good points. However, it doesn't take into account that in war, weaker parties should be forgiven for taking more drastic steps at victory.

I am sure you can guess which country is which, and why Ukraine might be forced to go all-in even when Russia can hold back. Do you feel that given the disparities in national strength, including Russia's constant boasts of military parity on par with the United States, that they should be forced to exert themselves against a nation with a fraction of their wealth and population? I, for one, certainly didn't expect Ukraine to survive more than a couple weeks when the war initially broke out.

(Yes, yes muh NATO aid, but the best we've sent is ATACMS and Storm Shadow, both of which have proven to be almost impossible.)

I most certainly am not downplaying the loss of 50K lives. I don't know how accurate that figure is (or the estimated Ukie losses). Both sides keep it tightly under wraps. But 50K is a lot. But still very far from all out war.

Only thing I'd observe in the above is that you have it the wrong way around with the munitions. Shells and missiles have expiry dates. You don't use up all your new stuff until you've run out and are reduced to using your oldest. You use some of the new stuff both because it is effective and because you want to battlefield test it. But where all else is equal you want to use up your ageing stocks because they just become wasted money. Same way the Western MIC has been using Ukraine as a huge opportunity to send ageing munitions and equipment to Ukraine so that they can soak the Biden administration for more money to buy new stuff.

That's correct for the shells and missiles, but one doesn't typically do a gradual move backwards when it comes to armored vehicles given that if they die so too do the men inside, which is what Russia has been observed doing.

 

[Frederica Bernkastel]

. I'm just tired of the hyperbole and attempts by NAFO types and the media in general to suggest Russia is struggling.

I don't understand this argument when Russia had to retreat from Kyiv (something the Russians continue to memory hole), have struggled to retake Kharkiv, has neutered their security apparatus to point ISIS regularly does terrorist attacks there, and then totally forget they let Syria collapse while withdrawing troops from Finnish border to commit to Ukraine. I'm not why If Russia isn't struggling, why do they need North Korean troops when Ukraine is not even a peer partner to Ukraine? Just saying it's all CIA propaganda, and that media is creating narrative around Ukraine doesn't make any sense.

Also, I'm not sure how it's beneficial for Russia to work with one hand-behind its back, not go all in, using your calculus, since how does prolonging the war benefit Russia? If they won already, they'd stop wasting so much Russian equipment, money and lives. It's not beneficial at all to prolong wars as much possible unless you're not fighting them. Like, I don't see Israel benefiting from its prolonged war with Hamas.

Also, your previous points that the territories Russia invaded "voted to join" is pretty insane too. Some of us are very knowledgeable about Soviet history, and know how Russian elections work. You're acting as if Estonians, Lithuanians, Lativians etc forgot what Russia did, and won't act accordingly.

 

[Overly Serious]

Good points. However, it doesn't take into account that in war, weaker parties should be forgiven for taking more drastic steps at victory.

There's an underlying assumption here that greater desperation justifies greater forgiveness of actions taken. You use the word forgiveness yourself. That assumption may even seem natural to people - you dragged people off the street and sent them to fight, you deployed barrier troops behind them to make sure they don't retreat (and we have cases on video of Ukranian soldiers being shot by their own side for doing so). But, you're desperate and you're the weaker party, it becomes more understandable when you're fighting for your existence. But what other than decades of Hollywood movies makes the underdog the hero? We're programmed to equate the two but it's not some law of Nature. The war in Ukraine was a civil war years before Russia invaded. It began with a Western backed coup by people who have openly stated their goal of breaking up Russia into smaller ethnostates, who have publicly admitted that previous peace treaties with Russia were merely to buy time to build up fortifications in Eastern Ukraine and that the goal is to station missiles minutes from Moscow. Does the moral forgiveness of "but we're desperate" apply to the aggressor just because plans haven't worked out? Even that has another assumption behind it which is that the Nation is the base unit of thinking and like the atom we shouldn't divide it further. But Ukraine as a nation is some six decades old. Half the people in it ARE Russian, they just happened to be on the wrong side of the line when a Soviet dictator drew a line on a map. Since 2014, as many Ukranians have fled INTO Russia as fled into the West. The whole idea of Ukraine vs. Russia is an abstraction and a poor one at that. Does the assumption of greater moral forgiveness apply to actual people who don't support the Kiev government in the first place? Zelensky campaigned on a platform of reconciliation and peace with the breakaway oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk. That was a key pillar of his platform - no more civil war. And the moment he was in office he suspended rival parties, shutdown pro-Russian media (as he decided). Kiev wasn't the underdog, they were the big dog in their own internal conflict. Until Russia entered due to the existential threat NATO troops on their border would represent. Is it any wonder Russia got nervous when they see people with Swastikas and supplied with German tanks rolling towards them? The last time that happened twenty million Russians died.

All this to basically say I don't agree with your premise that we extend greater moral leeway towards a party because it is weaker. Contrary to every American TV show and movie, the weaker party is not necessarily the Good Guy. In fact sometimes they are the aggressor. Kiev became a proxy for the US. Against the people's wishes but to the gain of Kiev's elites. Ukraine was the most corrupt country in Europe. It's even more so now. If you want to argue moral forgiveness for the less nice things Kiev is doing, it's going to have to be on the basis that they are in the right, not on the basis that they are losing. If the country breaks up along more historical ethnic lines so that the Russian people in Ukraine aren't ruled by an anti-Russian elite, that might well be the best long-term solution for peace. Which is what all of us should actually be wanting.

I, for one, certainly didn't expect Ukraine to survive more than a couple weeks when the war initially broke out.

Then respectfully, you were woefully uninformed. There was a possibility that hostilities might have ceased much earlier. If Russia's abortive shock attack on Kiev had worked or if the initial peace deal had gone ahead and Kiev not been talked out of it by Boris Johnson. But that's not what you're talking about when you say "survive". You mean militarily. I've never heard anyone from the Russian side suggest it was going to be measured in weeks. On the contrary, I recall Lavrov saying early on he thought it would end in 2024 or 2025. I did hear some US pundits state that it would be. But they can't have been in touch with reality. Kiev and the West have spent a decade building fortifications in the Donbas and building up troops. You don't blow through those in a matter of weeks. Ukraine had literally the largest army in Europe by manpower. And an infinite money hack from the USA along with masses of modern Western military equipment.

I don't know how to put this though I'm not trying to be rude. If you genuinely thought Ukraine would fall militarily in a couple of weeks, you can't have been paying attention or know much military history. It is NEVER "over by Christmas." And I certainly never saw the "couple of weeks" angle pushed by Russia.

I don't understand this argument when Russia had to retreat from Kyiv (something the Russians continue to memory hole), have struggled to retake Kharkiv, has neutered their security apparatus to point ISIS regularly does terrorist attacks there, and then totally forget they let Syria collapse while withdrawing troops from Finnish border to commit to Ukraine. I'm not why If Russia isn't struggling, why do they need North Korean troops when Ukraine is not even a peer partner to Ukraine? Just saying it's all CIA propaganda, and that media is creating narrative around Ukraine doesn't make any sense.

Fair question. You're asking given the above how I can say Russia isn't struggling. I'll take a few points in order. The initial shock strike on Kiev was a failed gamble. Low stakes but worth a try (though obviously not with hindsight). There was never a large scale move to occupy Kiev. You can tell that by the small numbers of troops sent. It takes a much larger number to actually occupy a city. There are actual formulae for this. It was a rapid blitz attempt to seize an airport and some centres of power and hypothesized, supposed to be accompanied by local officials and military leaders using it as the impetus to force peace negotiations. Somewhere along the way the bribes disappeared or weren't honoured and the accompanying non-military side of things never happened. It was less a military failure than an Intelligence failure. We don't know what happened in detail, but clearly the gamble didn't pay off for Russia. It wasn't a credible attempt to seize Kiev solely by force, that much is obvious. So when it didn't work, Russia pulled back everyone they were still able to (RIP, paratroopers) and settled in for doing things the traditional way. I'd love to know what was going on behind the scenes there but it will probably be a long time before we find out.

Okay, the more substantive points like falling back from Khakiv. It's two far into Ukraine and would lead at the time to Russia just being over-extended for the sake of territorial gains when their goals are not primarily territorial. It would have cost them a lot of men to hold onto when what Russia actually wants is to break the Ukranian forces. So they fell back to more defensible areas with much shorter lines to defend and let the Ukranian forces crash against them for the past couple of years. Which - because the Ukranian forces are led by politicians more than they are soldiers - the Ukranian forces have obligingly been doing. It's a tactic Russia has been employing over and over. Look at Kherson - the Russians had a lot of forces on the Northern banks of the Dniepr but retreated back to the Southern half. Hailed as a great victory by Kiev and the West but the reality is that Russia just swapped a situation where they were trading losses with Ukraine 1:1 for a situation where they were trading maybe 3:1 or more in Russia's favour. Because Kiev politicians were insistent that the "advantage" be pressed and so innumerable Ukranian soldiers day after day get sent in crappy little boats across the river and get bogged down and shot by Russian forces on the shore. And their air defence and missile systems on the Northern banks get blown up one by one too.

The key to understanding this which most people seem not to get is that Russia is not measuring success in how much territory it controls. They never were. Only Kiev politicians are because they see everything in terms of PR and demonstrating to the West that they're winning in order to secure more funding and arms. Over and over Russia has held back from advancing too far or withdrawn after an advance to more established lines. And Kiev has thrown its young and old (but never rich) at their lines. A good case in point is Robotyne in the South where Russia could have collapsed the pocket at any time over the course of months but with Zelensky seeing losing ground as politically costly for him, just kept pouring in troops week after week, which the Russians just shot. Horrible. Utterly horrible. Then after months of this I don't know what changed but Russia said that's enough and seized it. Maybe they just wanted to advance the lines more East and West of it, I don't know. What I do know is that Kiev and Western pundits are looking at the land owned and Russian military commanders are looking at the kill count. They're not playing the same game as each other.

(Except in Bakhmut where Wagner went rogue under Prigozhin and seemed determined to capture it at any cost for the glory of it, in a stark break from the general strategic approach of the rest of the Russian army. Possibly why Prigozhin is now currently residing in the great dasha in the sky)

The other thing is that perhaps when I said "not struggling" that is too easily misinterpreted. I was talking primarily at the national level. Russia hasn't come close to the level of mobilisation that Ukraine has and whilst it's suffered a bit economically, is still fairly robust. In some ways it's even gained because this has given Putin the justification he needs to purge Russia's military of some of the corruption and incompetence. They're in much better shape now than they have been in decades in some sense. Now on the ground it's different - many of the Ukranian soldiers have fought like damn tigers, especially in the early days of the war. They've put up a heck of a fight. But at a strategic level, a national level, Russia is more like having a very intense gym workout than real trouble. At least for now. Whilst on the ground, Ukraine is now exceeding its limits. The West is pushing them to conscript 18 year olds right out of school ("to the last Ukranian" as the Biden administration officials kept saying, indeed). And the Ukranian front is collapsing on all sides.

Sorry, this is becoming a very long answer. To your other points, allowing Syria to collapse. I don't know. I presume to Russia it's just not worth the cost but I'm 100% certain there were conversations in advance between Israel, Turkey and Russia about how to play it all. So I can't answer that. North Korean soldiers, I don't know yet if that's true or not, but I think there's some kind of agreement between NK and Russia so if it has some NK soldiers in Russian territory (the alleged capture was in Kursk which is in Russia) I don't see why they wouldn't use them. I'll let the dust settle a bit more on that one before I decide what I believe on this.

Also, I'm not sure how it's beneficial for Russia to work with one hand-behind its back, not go all in, using your calculus, since how does prolonging the war benefit Russia? If they won already, they'd stop wasting so much Russian equipment, money and lives. It's not beneficial at all to prolong wars as much possible unless you're not fighting them. Like, I don't see Israel benefiting from its prolonged war with Hamas.

The reason is because it's not beneficial to Russia to break its back destroying a country wholesale. Russia doesn't need land or natural resources or even more people (though it could use all three). It has these things in abundance. It's goals are national security. For that what it wants is neutrality or annexation of Donestk and Luhansk on its borders (originally it was fine with neutrality but now it will want annexation), and it wants a negotiated peace with a border nation that commits to neutrality in a way it can trust. Which is going to mean demilitarization probably. Doing Dresden style bombings as the allies did to the Germans is counterproductive. It's not going to lead to long-term negotiated peace.

As to why not throw everything at it and get it over with? The reality is that this actually costs them more than the slow and steady approach. National economies and social cohesion are sensitive things. Throwing everything up into the air in some huge one time push is likely to cause far bigger ripples and upset than just a moderate and steady effort for a few years. In terms of jobs, inflation, public resistance, etc. There's a huge difference between paying for more volunteer soldiers and yanking people off the street the way Kiev is doing. Or tanking viable businesses because of a big spike in inflation or employees diverted to war efforts.

The whole philosophy of Russia is completely alien to the West. They're approaching this like an experienced boxer, letting his opponent tire himself out and pacing themselves round after round.

Also, your previous points that the territories Russia invaded "voted to join" is pretty insane too. Some of us are very knowledgeable about Soviet history, and know how Russian elections work. You're acting as if Estonians, Lithuanians, Lativians etc forgot what Russia did, and won't act accordingly.

Huh? I'm talking about Donetsk and Luhansk. And I don't think any informed person genuinely thinks that the people in those regions aren't in favour of it. The whole civil war kicked off after these regions large scale refused to recognize Poroshenko's government that came in via Victoria Nuland's coup.

 

[World in Scarlet]

These attacks are a symmetrical response to identical Russian activities in Ukraine (and Europe).
Unprovoked Russian aggression preceded the Ukrainian retaliation. If the Russian government wishes for them to end, it can stop its attacks against Ukraine or negotiate a deal in which both sides agree to not use such means.

Denouncing only the victim of aggression for retaliating against the aggressor by means the latter freely uses to attack it shows that a person is unserious.

 

[Wholesome Big Chungus]

The 'full scale' part. Russia hasn't even fully mobilised or moved to a wartime economy.

Two more weeks and Kyiv will fall

 

[Frederica Bernkastel]

There was never a large scale move to occupy Kiev.

I appreciate you being respectful, and we go back and forth but you write a lot, and and I'm more of a laconic person. But, I think you're making a lot of assumptions that just don't make a lot of sense. You write a lot because you have to make complex explanations for things that are clearly illogical and contradictory that could be explaned by basic logic. If your claim was true - there was no reason for them to send a convoy to Kiev. There's no logical explanation as to why Russia would waste troops, and tanks, if they never intended to take it. They could have just never attacked there and wasted vaulable time and equipment. It's also been two years, and they could make a move for it now if your claim was true. Yet, they still won't do it. It's clear Russia is struggling because full mobilization would be unpopular there, and Putin has real political costs.

Okay, the more substantive points like falling back from Khakiv

They did not fall back. They retreated, in panic, and left Ukraine billions of dollars in military equipment. This isn't representative of what happened. Just hand-waving losses in equipment and troops to defensive lines as some kind of genius military calculation is doesn't make any sense.

The reason is because it's not beneficial to Russia to break its back destroying a country wholesale

This is also a really strange response. Why would one argue that prolonging a war leads to less destruction when more people are dying and more equipment is being destroyed in both countries? Again, that doesn't make any sense. That's just not logical by any means. Your logic leads to more costs, and less benefits, for Russia over time. I'm pretty sure Russia wants to be left with more troops, more military equipment, and less cities destroyed so actually don't have to pour resources into rebuilding shit. That makes much more sense than what you're saying here.

Huh? I'm talking about Donetsk and Luhansk

Russia is claiming more than that now because they've held illegal elections Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Neither the elections in Donestk or Luhansk because they were illegally annexed by Russia. Russia is clearly in violation of it's 1991 agreement to respect Ukraine's 1991 borders when it declared independence. There is no legal basis for this argument. It's complete non-sense. If Russia wants to make agreements like this, it shouldn't be surprised, in the future, when Finland, Japan, Georgia, China etc start violating their agreements with Russia, and take their land because Russia has a lot of other dipolamatic land disputes outside of Ukraine too.

 

[SBG]

If the Russian weren't such drunken incompetent corrupt clowns, they could be good. Probably not as good as the US. But they could be better. Of course, that starts with sending your soldiers to fight in a war that's worth fighting and even dying over. Which the war in Ukraine is not.

Their army wouldn't have nearly as many issues if it was well supplied.

It really dismantles a lot of the pro-Russia arguments when you think about how if Russia was nearly as powerful as its proponents wanted to believe, they'd be able to go in with overwhelming force and tons of equipment to take out Ukraine and finish all their goals. They can't, because they've nothing like that.

Instead, they're stuck trying to use what little equipment they have while struggling to produce more since supply chains for them are now having to make use of shell games to get some parts through sanctions. Letting this drag out fucks their economy, has promoted a ton of Russians fleeing their country for greener pastures, and makes them look more like a paper tiger on the international stage since they're pretty much fighting toe to toe with a massively weaker neighbor.

 

[Outer Space Traveller]

>article about old people being social engineered to set fires in phone booths
>all the comments are about how Putin is le bad or how Ukraine will lose the war

A&N gaining it's reputation as usual, I see.

 

[High-Fructose Corn Syrup]

Forgot to list foreign soldiers:

It was never proven these were norks

These attacks are a symmetrical response to identical Russian activities in Ukraine (and Europe).
Unprovoked Russian aggression preceded the Ukrainian retaliation. If the Russian government wishes for them to end, it can stop its attacks against Ukraine or negotiate a deal in which both sides agree to not use such means.

Denouncing only the victim of aggression for retaliating against the aggressor by means the latter freely uses to attack it shows that a person is unserious.

The west started this war when they initiated a coup in 2014.
Russia is and was defending itself when it invaded.

 

[N Space]

It was never proven these were norks

>Multiple intelligence agencies claim Norks are in Ukraine.
>Soldiers looking like Norks are captured.
>They speak Korean.
>They tacitly admit they are Norks.
>Still claims there's no proof they're Korean.