A slew of arson attacks on military recruitment sites have been attributed to Ukraine by Russia, which claims that callers from that country are enticing elderly Russians into committing such crimes.
There is no evidence to support the assertion.
According to the prosecutor general’s office, Ukrainian agents called Russians under the guise of police or creditors and encouraged them to attack the centre in exchange for promises to pay off debts.
According to reports, some Russians were promised the return of their stolen savings.
In that allegedly fraudulent scheme, the victims were informed that thieves had obtained access to their savings but that if they attacked a job facility, they would receive their money back.
The victims were occasionally also told that the attack would aid in catching the offenders.
The mass-produced phone calls, according to the prosecution, were made as Russia advanced on the Ukrainian front.
The Russian interior ministry emphasised in its statement on the suspected frauds that assaults on military recruitment centres are punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
According to BBC Europe analyst Alexander Schlichter, if accurate, Russia’s accusations paradoxically read as a huge tribute to the skill of Ukrainian intelligence personnel.
The Russian charge has not yet received a response from Ukrainian officials.
There have been numerous similar arson assaults in Russia since February 2022, when Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
However, they have grown recently, concomitant with a fresh push for widespread recruitment that involved a significant official advertising campaign.
According to Sergei Mironov, a hardline nationalist lawmaker, 25 attempts to destroy the centres were made merely on August 1 and 2.
The Ukrainian contact centres mentioned in the schemes, according to Mr. Mironov’s letter to Sergei Shoigu, are now acceptable targets for the Russian military.
Russia’s maximum conscription age was raised by three years last month, expanding the pool of males eligible for conscription.
Prior to the modification, Russia’s mandatory military service requirement for all healthy men between the ages of 18 and 27 was one year. The maximum age is now 30.
According to estimates from the military ministry, 231,000 more soldiers were enlisted between 1 January and 3 August, according to the former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev.
President Vladimir Putin started a “partial” national mobilisation in September, which scared many Russians and led to the emigration of thousands of eligible males.
According to Russian media, recent arson attacks on recruitment centres have included the following:
A 76-year-old pensioner attempted to set fire to an army recruitment centre on July 29 in Severodvinsk, in Russia’s Arctic region, but his Molotov cocktail hit the wall without lighting.
A retired doctor handed a huge sum of money to a con artist posing as a Federal Security Service (FSB) official on the same day in Kazan, a Volga River city east of Moscow. The conman then instructed her to set fire to a recruitment office, stating that if she did not, he would kill her daughter.
A Molotov cocktail was thrown into a recruitment centre in Feodosia, Crimea, on July 30, leading to the arrest of a 51-year-old school teacher. Crimea is currently under Russian occupation. She said that a contact on the Telegram messaging app had given her instructions.
A recruitment centre in Podolsk, a city south of Moscow, was twice attacked by arsonists on July 31: first, a 76-year-old man and his 50-year-old son who had allegedly been victimised by fraudsters in a phone call, and then a 22-year-old catering manager who had allegedly also been the target of phone scammers promising to return stolen money.