The fire at Sir Keir Starmer’s house was more than an arson attack – tt was intended to spark division

Tom Tugendhat

The Rt Hon Tom Tugendhat is the Conservative MP for Tonbridge

Published 17 June 2026 

The fire at Keir Starmer’s house was never just an arson attack. It was always supposed to spark division, to give Russia freedom of action in our waters and even in our country. Look online and tell me it didn’t work.

A 22-year-old Ukrainian builder, Roman Lavrynovych, set light to the Prime Minister’s house and, according to a BBC investigation, didn’t really know whose door he was burning. Lavrynovych was recruited through Telegram and given escalating tasks: scrawling hateful graffiti, then putting up incendiary posters, then finally the fire itself, all inspired by a handler he knew only as EL.

After the fire, he was told to take his money and leave the city. He didn’t make it out, but his handler didn’t really care. He was expendable. Another cheap cog in the machine of division targeting us.

What this attack, and many more like it, show is that the intention is to tear this country apart. And the worst thing about it, it’s working.

Look at how it was done. While the focus has been on the arson, the same operation ran two fake online movements at once: a far-Right group and an invented Islamist front, directed from the same hand. That’s right. Both.

This isn’t like the propaganda of old, trying to convince us that the Soviet tractor target was met or the workers were better fed and happier. This is an attack on the idea that we are one people, one nation. The genius of it is its symmetry. Fund both sides and inflame everyone, then stand back and watch others fan the flames.

Evgeny Lyukshin, a 23-year-old Russian diplomat and the son of a senior official, is likely to be the person who stirred up these actions. He’s said to have been trained in information warfare and have connections right to the top in Moscow.

Of course the Russian embassy denies it, they would. But then they told us that two incompetent poisoners were tourists. Just look at the pattern: Novichok in Salisbury and polonium in London, and many more murders, tell a story that requires a great deal of wilful blindness to ignore.

What followed was the same pattern of lies. Not trying to convince anyone of the truth, quite the opposite, to convince people that there is no truth. That all is lies and all is corruption. That’s the propaganda Moscow promotes today.

After each event, Russia set about spreading different far-fetched stories that were then repeated by the cretinously gullible, the wilfully ignorant and the traitorously complicit.

Stories spread that the Prime Minister had somehow brought the attack on himself, or that it was staged, or that the culprit was the real victim, or that the novichok was made in Britain. Amazingly, and just to show how much they work, those lies are still circulating. Because it was never about the fire, it was always about the division.

Now those lies are repeated and amplified by our own loudest voices, figures such as Tommy Robinson who visited Moscow and, in a no doubt extraordinary coincidence, repeats the Kremlin’s talking points.

That’s the real weapon. Not the petrol bomb, but the twisted truth. Once a fire can be turned into a story of scandal and supposition with half the country nodding along, our enemies have what they want: a nation that can no longer agree on what it has just seen with its own eyes.

For decades the Kremlin has been clear. Putin’s agents have poisoned and murdered, lied and dissembled, and bought influence and ideas in our country and among our allies. If John le Carré wrote about the golden age of spies, his heirs today would write simply about the age of gold.

That’s the real difference between the Soviets and the Russians, the communists had ideas but only limited cash. This lot have oodles of it. And they’re using it.

Ex-members of the Lords, and some from the Commons, shilling for oligarchs, lawyers paid to silence journalists, it’s all part of the war that’s being fought here at home that has now, literally, ended up on the Prime Minister’s own doorstep. Still we barely act.

We can’t just blame Moscow. Open Twitter, Bluesky, or whichever app has the algorithm that you feel promotes the lies you most agree with, and you will see what the public square has become. Not accountable, not responsible, but carefully edited automatically to generate outrage.

We risk becoming a nation unable to talk and a people who treat politics only through the tribalism of rage. We risk becoming a state hostile with itself.

This is why the fixation on Russia alone misses the danger. While Moscow has invested heavily in disinformation – as the feeding of divisive stories known to be untrue is known, it’s not just Russia. When Iran’s internet was knocked out, a number of Scottish separatist sites went silent. It’s hard to explain why someone claiming to be a nurse from Glasgow should be affected by an outage in Tehran, but they were. China is perhaps running the most sophisticated operation.

Governments like those in Moscow, Beijing and Tehran think nothing of controlling speech at home and murdering dissidents. Why would they hesitate before using disinformation techniques against us?

The question for us is: are we going to sit here and take it? To accept the daily attacks and threats against us? Have we become the whipping boy for authoritarian states who, because of our history and alliance with the US are a useful example to demonstrate the impotence of their enemies? We don’t have to be.

As this week’s capture of the Russian ship in the English Channel shows, something many of us have demanded for years with no response, leadership matters but only if actions have consequences. Until now, our prime ministers have been unwilling or unable to act.

We can turn this around. We are not a weak nation. We have the intelligence services, the police, the diplomatic reach and the financial muscle to make a hostile state pay for its crimes. What we lack is the will.

A state that won’t defend itself isn’t just vulnerable, it’s encouraging attack. Weakness is provocative and strength deters. When a Russian vessel was challenged in the Channel, others changed course. That’s not luck, it’s consequences.

So let’s act and own the result. Shut the propaganda channels, prosecute the traitors and use the National Security Act that I brought in to defend our country. Boost our defences, equip our fleet and use the intelligence services to push back.

We are not impotent but indolent. We don’t have to be.

MORE FROM TOM TUGENDHAT

Starmer has chosen welfare over defence, and Britain will pay a terrible price

Read more

Most importantly, we can choose who we are. Our neighbours face the same threats. We don’t need to believe the worst of each other. We can ignore the lies. We can recognise that our police, our courts, and, yes, even our media are accountable and part of us – more than any Moscow agent or traitor.

Russia is a failed state led by a corrupt, murderous, ageing prince. We can choose to be strong.

---

Rt Hon Tom Tugendhat is a former security minister and served as chair of the Commons’ foreign affairs select committee

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/06/17/putin-wants-britain-to-believe-his-lies-its-working/