A London jury on 15 June 2026 found Roman Lavrynovych and Stanislav Carpiuc guilty of conspiracy to commit arson attacks on properties and a vehicle connected to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, following Metropolitan Police charges stemming from fires set in north London in May 2025.

The jury deliberated for seven-and-a-half hours before returning the guilty verdict on the conspiracy count, Sky News reported. Lavrynovych was additionally convicted of two counts of arson being reckless as to whether life would be endangered — though he was acquitted of the more serious charge of damaging property by fire with intent to endanger life, relating to incidents on 11 and 12 May 2025 at two north London addresses, BBC News reported. A third co-defendant, Petro Pochynok, was also named in the proceedings, according to the Metropolitan Police.

The mechanism of recruitment is what sharpens the geopolitical dimension. Lavrynovych and Carpiuc were drawn into the plot through a Russian-language Telegram network operating as an online sabotage conduit, the New York Times reported, citing the broader infrastructure behind the attacks as a Russian online sabotage network. The Telegram angle fits a well-documented operational pattern in which Russian intelligence-linked networks exploit encrypted, pseudonymous platforms to recruit low-cost proxies in Western countries — individuals who carry physical risk while handlers maintain deniable distance.

Speaking on 16 June, Starmer said he was "very pleased for my family's sake" that the convictions had been secured, BBC News reported. By 18 June he had sharpened the framing considerably, describing the attacks as "deeply concerning and reckless" and stating that the UK was dealing with proxy attacks from Russia, The Guardian reported.

The distinction between Starmer's two statements — one personal relief, the other a direct attribution to Russian proxy activity — tracks a familiar escalation in official posture as legal proceedings conclude and political responses take shape. Governments have historically been cautious about state-level attribution before a verdict; with convictions secured, the prime minister's language shifted from the personal to the strategic.

The acquittal on the intent-to-endanger-life charges matters legally but does not diminish the operational picture. The conspiracy conviction establishes that coordinated planning took place; the recklessness convictions establish that Lavrynovych acted knowing fire in residential settings could threaten lives. The difference between intent and recklessness is meaningful at sentencing and in law, but for threat assessment purposes the infrastructure behind the attacks — cross-border recruitment, encrypted coordination, targeting of a head of government — is the operative concern.

The UK has, over the past several years, attributed a widening range of hostile acts to Russian state or state-proximate actors: the Salisbury poisonings, GRU-linked cyber operations, and more recently a wave of physical sabotage attempts across Europe that Western services have linked to Russian military intelligence. The Starmer case, if the Telegram-network attribution holds, slots into that European-wide pattern of low-sophistication, high-deniability harassment operations designed to impose costs and signal reach rather than cause strategic damage.

Sentencing dates for Lavrynovych and Carpiuc had not been announced at the time of publication. The outcome for co-defendant Pochynok — whether tried separately, acquitted, or still awaiting proceedings — had not been confirmed in the available verified record.