Russia has called British claims that Moscow was involved in an alleged arson attack on a Ukrainian aid center in London “absurd.”
British suspect Dylan Earl, 20, was charged last month with working for a Russian intelligence service after being accused of setting fire to the aid center.
He became the first person to be charged under the new National Security Act enacted last year against those secretly working for hostile states within the UK, as well as being charged with aggravated arson and endangering others.
Speaking on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the allegation that her country was involved was part of an information war against Moscow amid Vladimir Putin’s continuing invasion of Ukraine.
Zakharova said Russia considered such accusations provocative and never carried out sabotage attacks against civilian targets, distancing Russia from the accusations.
Russia has branded as “absurd” British claims that Moscow was involved in an alleged arson attack on a Ukrainian aid center in London (pictured as firefighters worked at the scene).
The fire at the industrial estate occurred shortly before midnight on March 20. Eight fire trucks and about 60 firefighters spent more than four hours fighting the fire.
But the case was shrouded in secrecy at the time due to “operational activity” carried out by Met officers.
Details of the alleged plot were not revealed until April, after a judge lifted reporting restrictions following a series of arrests by British counter-terrorism police.
It emerged that the industrial units in Leyton, east London, were owned by a Ukrainian businessman, and that the site is advertised on charity websites as an aid collection center for Ukrainians.
It was also revealed that the fire was being treated as an alleged Russian attack on British soil to attack Ukrainian supplies and that Earl, from Leicestershire, is alleged to be at the center of the alleged plot.
He is also accused of recruiting others to carry out an arson attack at the aid collection center in east London.
Details of the alleged plot were revealed in April after a judge lifted reporting restrictions following a series of arrests by British counter-terrorism police.
Earl was charged last month with a series of crimes, including assisting a foreign intelligence service, which officials said worked for Russia.
Paul Adrian English, 60, from Roehampton and Nii Kojo Mensah, 21, from Croydon were also later charged with aggravated arson.
They are said to be unaware that Earl allegedly worked for the Russian group, which became a banned terrorist group in the UK last year.
UK police are believed to have arrested a total of eight people over the alleged arson plot, five of whom have been charged.
Following a preliminary hearing, Earl and other suspects were ordered to appear at the Old Bailey on May 10.
The major investigation is being led by officers from the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command and has been supported by officers from East Midlands, Leicestershire Police, Kent Police and South East Counter Terrorism Police.
Speaking at the time, Commander Dominic Murphy, head of the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command, which is leading the investigation, said: “This is a very significant moment and investigation for us.
‘Not only are the charges that have been authorized by the CPS extremely serious, but it is also the first time we have arrested and now charged someone using the powers and legislation set out in the National Security Act.
‘We have spoken publicly in recent times about various national security threats we have been facing and the increased operational activity needed across counter-terrorism policing to address them.
“While these are very serious allegations, I want to assure the public that we do not believe there is any major threat to them in relation to this matter.”
Speaking on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova (pictured in January) said the accusation that her country was involved in the aid center fire was part of an information war against Moscow. amid Vladimir Putin’s continued invasion of Ukraine.
Although Russia has periodically denied carrying out attacks on foreign soil, It has long been suspected that Moscow waging a shadow war across Europe.
In late April, a British-assisted Czech investigation concluded that the same Russian spy unit behind the 2018 Salisbury poisonings was also behind two deadly explosions at ammunition depots in the Czech Republic.
Explosions near the village of Vrbetice in the eastern Czech Republic in 2014 killed two workers and caused extensive damage, four years before an assassination attempt against former Russian agent Sergei Skripal in the English town.
While Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia survived the deadly Novichok nerve agent attack, it later claimed the life of a British woman, Dawn Sturgess, and left a man, Charlie Rowley, and police officer Nick Bailey seriously ill. .
The Czech National Central Office against Organized Crime (NCOZ) stated in its report that ‘the police authority considers it proven that the explosions (…) were carried out by members of the Russian military intelligence, the Main Administration of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (also known as GRU).’
Czech police said the explosions in Vrbetice were “part of long-term diversionary operations by Russian military intelligence on the territory of the EU and Ukraine.”
Czech intelligence and media said the agents were the same suspects in poisoning former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, England, in 2018: Alexander Mishkin and Anatoliy Chepiga.
The pair used the same fake names they later used in the UK in the attack on the Skripals: Ruslan Boshirov (Chepiga) and Alexander Petrov (Miskin).
The Russian agents belonged to the notorious GRU Unit 29155.
While the report does not name Chepiga and Mishkin, their identities were revealed as suspicious and reported by Russian independent news outlet The Insider.
The same publication, along with its partners 60 Minutes and Der Spiegel, also found that the unit is likely the cause of Havana Syndrome, the name given to a series of debilitating medical ailments that affect American intelligence officers and diplomats in everyone and that are otherwise unexplained.
Although Russia has regularly denied carrying out attacks on foreign soil, Moscow has long been suspected of waging a shadow war across Europe. Pictured: Two Russian GRU agents, Alexander Mishkin and Anatoliy Chepiga, who allegedly carried out a poisoning attack in Salisbury, UK, in 2018, appear in CCTV footage from the city.
There have also been more suspected Russian attacks on foreign soil, including in Britain, since Vladimir Putin first took power in 2000.
In 2006, Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko, a former agent of the KGB and its post-Soviet successor agency, the FSB, became seriously ill in London after drinking tea laced with radioactive polonium-210. He died three weeks later.
Litvinenko had been investigating the shooting death of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya and the Russian intelligence service’s alleged ties to organized crime.
Before he died, Litvinenko told reporters that the FSB still operated a poison laboratory dating back to the Soviet era.
A British investigation found that Russian agents had killed Litvinenko, probably with Putin’s approval, but the Kremlin denied any involvement.
What’s more, in Germany in 2019, Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a Georgian citizen who fought against Russia during the Chechen war in the early 2000s, was shot twice in the head at point-blank range in a park in central Berlin.
Suspected FSB agent Vadim Krasikov was sentenced to life in prison by a German judge, for what the judge called a “carefully planned” hit.
They said Russian security services had provided Krasikov with a false identity, a false passport and the means to carry out the murder.
Krasikov is the only suspected FSB agent to have been captured and convicted abroad of murder, and Moscow has attempted to include him in a prisoner swap with the West on numerous occasions.
