In the early hours of 13 May 2025, British police officers burst into the south London flat where a young Ukrainian construction worker was sleeping and arrested him on suspicion of committing arson.
The three fires started by Roman Lavrynovych, 22, had a particular target — property linked to Sir Keir Starmer. At the trial where he was convicted, prosecutors said that the fires were commissioned by an unidentified Russian-speaking account on Telegram, which promised payment in cryptocurrency.
British investigators have not linked the plot directly to the Russian state, but Russian intelligence agents have previously commissioned arson attacks in Britain using similar methods of online recruitment and payments through anonymous accounts. Ukrainian nationals have been used as Russia’s proxies for sabotage missions in several European countries.
The person behind the Telegram account that instructed Lavrynovych has been identified by the BBC as Evgeny Lyukshin, a 23-year-old Russian diplomat who studied information warfare at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations.
But on social media, a very different explanation emerged — a conspiracy theory falsely claiming that the arsonists were male prostitutes seeking revenge on the prime minister.
Russian disinformation networks ‘amplify false stories’
Research by The i Paper and the Center for Countering Digital Hate has charted the spread of the false rumour from a handful of small X accounts, through a network of far right activists and conspiracy theorists, into Russian media outlets and widespread online circulation.
Two weeks after the fires, X posts promoting the “rent boy” conspiracy theory had been viewed almost 18 million times.
Melanie Smith, an information operations expert at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, said that although the accounts that originally posted the “rent boy” claim did not appear to be part of Russian disinformation networks, those networks later spread the story.
“We do see them quite often pick up and amplify stories that are provably false,” she said. Russian propagandists “monitor the online ecosystem” – particularly the far right in Europe – “trying to figure out which narratives are circulating and which ones of those work to their advantage”.
The first fire targeted a car that Starmer had previously owned, which went up in flames on a residential London street at 3 a.m. on May 8 2025, prosecutors said. Three days later, the front door of a property that Starmer owned in the 1990s was set on fire and on 12 May, the townhouse he shared with his family before moving to 10 Downing Street in 2024 was also targeted.
No one was injured in the three attacks, but news reports quickly spread about the link to Starmer, and the motivation became a key point of public speculation.
How the false rumour spread
Less than 15 minutes after Lavrynovych was arrested, and before the arrest was made public by the police, an account on X describing itself as a British “patriot” claimed to have the answer. “Angry unpaid rent boy,” it wrote in reply to a British news aggregator with more than 400,000 followers, which had reported the latest blaze.
No source for the false claim was provided, but after the police announced the arrest five hours later, the same account repeated the allegation in response to a prominent British far-right influencer. That influencer, who has around 340,000 followers including Elon Musk, went on to post the “rent boy” narrative himself.
A car was set alight in one of three arson attacks at locations linked to Keir Starmer (Photo: Supplied)At around the same time – 8am on 13 May 2025 – a second account began posting the same claim. The self-described “truth bomber” wrote: “Sources: No10 in crisis as police prepare to name Starmer arsonist as rent boy.”
Over the coming hours, the account posted the same claim several times, increasing its visibility by replying directly to Starmer’s tweets, as well as a prominent journalist and the same far right influencer and news account used by the initial poster. Neither account responded to requests to discuss the posts.
Two other X accounts, both containing content critical of the Labour government, shared the claim a “rent boy” was behind the fires on 13 May, at a time when the police had not published any information on the arrested man other than that he was 21 years old.
The false rumour gained traction two days later when Lavrynovych was charged, named by the police and reported by the British media as having a profile on a photography website describing himself as a “beginner model” open to “any work at a rate of 20 per hour”.
The unevidenced claim that Lavrynovych was a male prostitute was amplified by prominent far right activists and conspiracy theorists, and the same false allegation was later made toward his two co-defendants.
Lavrynovych was commissioned by an unidentified Russian-speaking account on Telegram and promised payment in cryptocurrency (Photo: Metropolitan Police/PA)Stanislav Carpiuc, 27, a Ukraine-born Romanian national who also had an amateur modelling profile online, was named by the police on 20 May and Petro Pochynok, a 35-year-old Ukrainian man, the following day.
Soon, the false allegations were the subject of countless social media posts, YouTube videos and eventually, on 22 May, a story published by a Russian news website that was sanctioned by the European Union last year for being “under the permanent control of the Russian leadership” and “spreading misinformation and propaganda”.
Kirill Dmitriev, Vladimir Putin’s “special envoy for investment and economic cooperation”, is among the public figures to refer to the conspiracy theory on X. “Is Starmer undermining peace in Ukraine because he hates young Ukrainian male models who hate him?” he wrote in January.
Despite evidence, conspiracy remains
During the trial at the Old Bailey, Lavrynovych said he did not know who Starmer was at the time he set the fires, or that the three targets he was sent to were linked to the same person.
Records presented to the court showed that Lavrynovych set up his own construction company in March 2025. At the time of the fires, he said he was working mainly in construction, as well as doing home removals and occasionally at the West London hotel where Carpiuc worked.
Carpiuc, meanwhile, was convicted of helping to organise the fires. At the time, he was studying for a business degree at university while working hotel shifts and sometimes for his father’s construction company — through which he had met Lavrynovych.
Mr Pochynok, who said he worked day shifts in construction and nights doing deliveries for Harrods, was a friend of Carpiuc and lived with his family between 2019 and 2023. He admitted agreeing to take a video of Lavrynovych but denied knowing he was going to conduct an arson attack before it took place. He was found not guilty of conspiracy to commit arson on Monday.
Despite the evidence presented at court, false claims that the fires were started by “rent boys” with whom the prime minister had extramarital affairs have remained commonplace on social media, and placards referencing the conspiracy theory have been displayed at protests in London.
Two houses were set ablaze in the attacks including a north London home occupied by the Prime Minister’s sister-in-law and her family which he still owns (Photo: James Manning/PA)Callum Hood, head of research at the Center for Countering Digital Hate, said the claim followed long-running attempts by far-right activists and conspiracy theorists to falsely suggest that Starmer was gay and had relationships with male sex workers, while other European leaders have been similarly targeted with “ludicrous” allegations about their personal lives.
“You get this interaction between the far right and conspiracy theorists, where the far right is coming up with stuff that’s politically useful to them, and then conspiracy theorists just test everything out and see what sticks,” Hood said. “Their whole business is producing content that performs well on social media.”
Hood said that disinformation targeting prominent international politicians was able to gain significant traction simply by “being repeated really often.” He said the spread of conspiracy theories on X had increased under Musk’s tenure due to content moderation downgrades and the introduction of paid-for verification checks that boost posts and financially reward users for engagement.
Smith said the lurid allegation that Starmer had relationships with male sex workers, she said, fits into broader Russian efforts to paint a “geopolitical narrative that the West is failing,” with traditional values in decline and political leaders marred by corruption and immorality.
Despite the evidence disclosed during the three men’s trial, Hood does not believe that the story will fade away among Britain’s online far-right influencers and conspiracy theorists.
“That they will say that this is the British state protecting Starmer, and that the outcome of the trial was engineered and is designed to cover up the truth,” he said. “They will use it as grist for the mill.”
The arson attacks were “abhorrent”, the Government said in a statement following the conviction.
A spokesman said: “This was an abhorrent attack and those responsible have now been brought to justice for their acts. We thank our partners in law enforcement and the Crown Prosecution Service for bringing these criminals to justice.”
Who is EL Money?
Roman Lavrynovych was sent on his mission by an anonymous Russian-speaking online account that used the name “EL Money”.
Giving evidence at his trial, Lavrynovych said the account contacted him through Telegram in September 2024 after he posted that he was looking for work in a large group used by Ukrainian jobseekers in London.
The first “job” he said he was offered was putting up flyers in London for an apparent far right group called Direct Action UK, which displayed an image of a Union Flag with riot police standing over a white man on the ground and a QR code taking people to the group’s TikTok page. Lavrynovych said he was paid £2 per poster, plus printing costs, and had to send EL Money photos as proof to receive payment.
Some of the photos that Lavrynovych shared with EL Money were later posted on social media accounts operated under the name of Direct Action UK. As well as posting a steady stream of hate speech against Muslims and immigrants and calling for the “remigration” of non-whites from Britain, the group was offering £4,000 payments for setting police cars on fire, and £100 in cryptocurrency for winning an anti-Muslim graffiti “competition”.
Evidence from Lavrynovych’s mobile phone presented to the Old Bailey showed no interaction with Direct Action UK, but EL Money’s next job for him was spraying anti-Muslim graffiti.
He told the court he was paid £20 for two incidents, including one at an Islamic centre in Croydon, but denied holding Islamophobic or racist views himself.
A spate of racist and anti-Muslim graffiti was reported to the Metropolitan Police in the same period, with the force recording seven incidents at mosques across London between 6 and 23 January 2025.
Lavrynovych said he never asked who he was communicating with, and was not told, and believed the account was operated by multiple people, sometimes men and sometimes women. He said he felt he could not refuse any instructions because they “knew so much about me”.
No evidence was presented at court concerning who was behind the EL Money account, but a BBC News investigation identified the person behind the account as Evgeny Lyukshin, a 23 Russian diplomat and son of a senior official.
A Western intelligence source told The i Paper that Russia frequently used social media platforms to recruit “disposable agents” for “one-time activities”. “Russia really, they have little to lose there,” they said. “There is no high-level training usually for these people. It’s really simple – they get paid, and if they get caught, they’re on their own.
“The idea behind these disposable agents creating trouble within the countries is to get [the countries] to back off supporting Ukraine, deal with your own issues, don’t get too involved in what we are trying to do.”
By Lizzie Dearden and Will Hazell
Hence then, the article about starmer was targeted by sex worker conspiracy straight from putin s playbook was published today ( ) and is available on inews ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Starmer was targeted by sex worker conspiracy straight from Putin’s playbook )
Also on site :