ShutterstockPrime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said he is pleased "justice has been done" after two men were convicted of arson attacks on property connected to him.
Ukrainian national Roman Lavrynovych, 22, and Ukrainian-born Romanian national Stanislav Carpiuc, 27, were found guilty on Monday of conspiring to carry out arson attacks on property and a car in 2025.
Shortly after the verdicts, a BBC Panorama investigation revealed that Russia was behind the arson attacks.
Speaking from the G7 summit in France, Starmer said he was "very pleased for my family's sake" that the men were convicted.
He told reporters: "Obviously it was a bad attack, and all the details have now come out in court and justice has been done".
But Sir Keir said the attack on his property needed to be seen in the "broader context" of Russia's war in Ukraine.
He cited Ukrainian successes in regaining territory and the impact of sanctions on Russia, and said it was the moment for the G7 to "ramp up the pressure" on Moscow.
The UK has announced a fresh wave of 70 sanctions on Russia targeting the Kremlin's "shadow fleet" used to move Russian oil and gas, and the finance networks used to evade Western sanctions.
That decision followed the boarding of an alleged Russian shadow fleet oil tanker in the English Channel on Sunday.
Prosecutors found the arson attacks were carried out in 2025 after a suspect was recruited online by Russian-speaking Telegram user "El Money" who promised him payment.
A BBC Panorama investigation uncovered evidence suggesting he is a 23-year-old Russian diplomat Evgeny Lyukshin, the son of a senior official who has been schooled in information warfare by spies and propagandists.
The BBC found that "El Money" offered Russian citizenship in return for other attacks, and glorified Putin in messages. Accounts based in Russian also spread disinformation on the motive for the attacks.
Earlier on Tuesday, Sir Richard Moore, the former head of MI6, warned the Russian President Vladimir Putin is "trying to intimidate" the UK with sabotage, arson and cyber attacks on British streets.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Sir Richard said proxy attacks showed Britain needed to have a "discussion" about "the balance of resourcing for security and defence".
The government and intelligence services have not yet said the Kremlin was behind the incident, but Sir Richard commended the BBC's reporting and said "we shouldn't be surprised at all" if Russian involvement was confirmed.
Sir Richard claimed Putin was under pressure over the war in Ukraine which meant he was "quite keen to expand the battlefield a bit" by using sabotage, cyber attacks and arson in the hope it would be "disruptive, distracting and intimidating to those of us who are supporting Ukraine".
Sir Keir said in April that "the use of proxies by hostile states in this country is a growing concern and a real concern", and the UK must "deal with malign state actors".
Sir Richard, who left MI6 last year, said the UK should address the concern by "doubling down" on its support of Ukraine, improving cyber security and investing in "good intelligence" to disrupt Russia's activity.
"There is a criminal justice element" to tackling the threat, he added, saying "thugs" who were recruited online must "go down for a very long stretch" if found to have acted as proxies for hostile states.
It follows the resignations of Defence Secretary John Healey and Armed Forces Minister Al Carns last week, who quit the government over a dispute with Sir Keir over funding for the military.
Writing on X on Monday evening, Carns said the arson attacks and subsequent disinformation campaign showed the UK needed to rethink its approach to defence.
He said defence was "the thread underneath everything now" and the incidents showed "why resilience matters".
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch also condemned the arson attacks and said "no one should face intimidation, threats or attacks because they hold public office".
She added: "Democracy is settled at the ballot box, not through fear or violence and definitely not through foreign interference from hostile countries."
