From December 13 to December 22, Russians staged 34 arson attacks due to “the actions of telephone fraudsters,” Mediazone has calculated.
The arsonists targeted mostly banks and police cars, with a few arsons occurring in post offices and shopping centers.
The first attack in the current wave of arson attacks was the December 13 attack on the Yekaterinburg military registration and enlistment office. Dmitry Baranov, 21, transferred three million rubles to someone, after which he was “forced” to throw several Molotov cocktails into the building in order to get the money back. The young man was sent to a pre-trial detention center in a terrorist attack case.
Most of the arsons took place on December 20 and 21. “Mediazona calls it the second largest wave of such attacks since the beginning of Russia’s war against Ukraine. For the first time, shopping centers and post offices were targeted.
In total, the publication estimates that there have been at least 156 such attacks since the beginning of the war. The FSB claimed that “fraudsters in most cases operate from the territory of Ukraine.”