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Russian police have blamed a spate of fire-bombings of military enlistment offices on “phone scammers” tricking people into carrying out the attacks.
At least 32 people have been involved in attacks on three dozen offices across Russia since Monday, accounting for a third of all such incidents reported since the start of the war in Ukraine.
Russian recruits gather outside a military recruitment centre of Bataysk, Rostov-on-Don region, in the south of Russia.Credit: AP
The arsons resumed this week just a few days after President Vladimir Putin signed into law several amendments which raised the age for draftees and made it almost impossible to dodge mobilisation.
Setting fire to enlistment offices, which hold records on conscripts and men deemed to be of combat age, became a popular form of protest for anti-war activists across Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.
Such attacks skyrocketed last autumn when desperate young men hurled Molotov cocktails at the facilities, hoping to destroy documents that could have been used to round them up and ship them off to the war’s front lines.
Russian outlet Mediazona has documented more than 113 arson attacks against army recruitment centres and government offices in total since the start of the invasion.
Since Monday at least 28 offices, from St Petersburg in Russia’s north-west to Nakhodka near the Chinese border, have been set on fire.
Most of the perpetrators of the recent attacks have been identified as aged 50 or older, according to media reports from two dozen Russian regions.
Police and security officials said they were victims of “phone scammers” and were not anti-war protesters.
Authorities have not formally commented on the increasing number of attacks, though some officials have suggested the incidents may involve foreign interference, without providing further details or supporting evidence.
State news agency Tass on Wednesday quoted an unnamed FSB official in the Urals who said the scammers were based “abroad” and targeted “vulnerable citizens or people who found themselves in difficult circumstances and are easy to influence”.
The FSB official said the scammers had often persuaded their victims to hand over banking details, or take out a loan, before convincing them to attack a recruitment office in order to recoup their losses.
“Those 80-something grandpas – they stood by the building, struggling with their phones: one couldn’t figure out how to turn on the camera, the other could not answer a phone call,” the Ostorozhno Moskva newspaper quoted an eyewitness of an arson in Moscow’s suburb of Podolsk as saying on Tuesday.
A Russian recruit hugs his mother at a military recruitment centre in Volgograd.Credit: AP
“And at some point, one of the grandpas came forward, took something out, threw it – and bang.”
The two elderly men involved in the attack were reportedly arrested by police. The same office was attacked again two days later.
Fraudsters target elderly and vulnerable people
Reports from across Russia, where phone scamming is a common phenomenon, with fraudsters primarily targeting elderly and vulnerable people, suggested a similar pattern.
In Russian-occupied Crimea, police on Monday arrested a school teacher who had hurled a bottle with flammable substance at a recruitment office in the town of Feodosiya.
“She told the police that she was guided by individuals who called her on the phone and introduced themselves as the security department of a bank and law enforcement officers,” local police said in a statement.
On Tuesday, a 66-year-old supermarket clerk was caught red-handed as she threw a Molotov cocktail at a recruitment office in the centre of St Petersburg. Another office was attacked in the city on the same day.
Fontanka, a well-respected local media outlet, quoted unnamed sources as saying that the woman was the victim of a months-long scamming operation.
The elderly woman was reportedly approached by fraudsters who initially told her that someone had used her identity to take out a loan in her name.
She was later allegedly convinced to take out a loan herself and was then promised it would be written off if she were to set an enlistment centre on fire.
The supermarket clerk was reportedly sent step-by-step guidelines on how to make a Molotov cocktail and avoid getting caught by police.
Telegraph, London
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