Russia is being set aflame by hundreds of arson attacks

Credit: PICRYL

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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.