In July 2020, Keir Starmer stepped before the cameras for the first time as leader of the opposition Labour Party, standing beside his wife outside their red-brick Victorian terrace in the north London suburb of Kentish Town. Almost five years later, just before his first anniversary as British prime minister, a 21-year-old Ukrainian set the entrance to their Kentish Town home on fire, lighting a rolled newspaper with liquid accelerant and matches and placing it against the entrance.
By then, the Starmers had moved to Downing Street. But the flat was occupied by his sister-in-law, whose daughter was asleep directly above the entrance. No one was injured and the damage was limited. Yet the fires still served a purpose: to send a message.
On June 19, 2026, that Ukrainian, Roman Lavrynovych, and his accomplice Stanislav Carpiuc, a now 27-year-old Ukrainian-Romanian hotel employee, were sentenced to seven and two years respectively for their roles in attacks on two London properties linked to Starmer, as well as a Toyota RAV4 he had previously owned.
Convicted of conspiracy to commit arson, neither man had devised the operation. They were executors of a plan likely developed thousands of miles away.
