A 23-year-old Russian diplomat has been linked to the firebombing of a house owned by Sir Keir Starmer’s following a lengthy investigation.

Two Ukrainian-born men, Roman Lavrynovych and Stanislav Carpiuc, 27, were convicted at the Old Bailey on Monday of conspiring to commit arson over a string of attacks targeting the Prime Minister.

A third man, Petro Pochynok, a 35-year-old Ukrainian, who had been accused of being “recruited by Carpiuc to help Lavrynovych” with the arson, was acquitted on Monday.

The court heard that Lavrynovych and Carpiuc were recruited to carry out the arson attacks by a Russian-speaking figure called “El Money”, who used the initials EL on Telegram and offered thousands of pounds for the attacks.

A BBC Panorama investigation found evidence suggesting that the EL account was run by Evgeny Lyukshin, a 23-year-old Russian diplomat and the son of a senior official with ties to the upper echelons of the Kremlin.

The investigation linked him to an extensive alleged sabotage campaign involving recruiting unwitting proxies through social media and the encrypted platform Telegram.

It allegedly involved creating fake online far-Right and Muslim groups, which were used to direct acts of vandalism in Britain and stir up division and fear.

The BBC said it could not be certain that Lyukshin was EL on Telegram, and that he did not respond to a request for comment, but claimed that one of the propaganda channels he allegedly used was taken down hours after he was contacted by the BBC.

A spokesman for the Russian embassy in London told The Telegraph that the arson case “may indicate that not all individuals in the United Kingdom support either the policies of the British Government towards Russia and Ukraine, or indeed the broader political and economic direction pursued by the current leadership”.

“The existence of such views cannot, in itself, be regarded as evidence of state involvement or direction,” the spokesman added.

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