May 01, 2024

Russians Forced to Become Arsonists


Russians Forced to Become Arsonists
Lit Molotov cocktail ready to be thrown. Ministerie van Defensie, Wikimedia Commons.

Since the outbreak of Russia's full-blown War on Ukraine, many Russians have turned to radical protests, hurling Molotov cocktails at government buildings and military commissariats. Among those engaged in such acts are minor schoolchildren and former law enforcement officers.

However, in certain instances, Molotov cocktails are not thrown by protesters but by isolated elderly individuals influenced by telephone scammers who have conned their victims out of money and sometimes shelter.

According to estimates by the independent online publication Kholod (The Cold), at least 51 people have fallen prey to such scams, including 33 elderly persons. Subsequently, the arsonists are subject to prosecution, at times facing severe criminal charges such as terrorism, carrying a maximum penalty of 20 years’ imprisonment. 

A journalist from Kholod interviewed one of the victims of the telephone scams, 61-year-old Galina Rybkina, who attempted to set fire to a branch of Sberbank, one of Russia's largest banks. 

The resident of a small town near the Black Sea, Rybkina received a call in December 2022 from an individual claiming to be from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The caller alleged that the police apprehended a fraudster attempting to secure a loan in her name. Subsequently, Rybkina was contacted by scammers who pretended to be investigators and a Central Bank employee. They instructed Rybkina to preempt the scammers by obtaining a loan herself and transferring money to a “secure” account.

After procuring loans, she was coerced by the criminals into assisting in identifying scammers within real estate agencies. This necessitated selling her two apartments at drastically reduced prices and transferring the funds to the same purportedly secure account.

Consequently, Rybkina was forced to relocate to a hotel. Despite the situation, she was optimistic. She believed the imaginary criminals would be apprehended and her property and funds returned. Instead, the pensioner received a new task: to set fire to a Sberbank branch. Allegedly, it was controlled by scammers they were trying to catch, and the pensioner needed to create a little chaos with the help of brilliant green and a Molotov cocktail. To make a flammable liquid, she was even sent instructions in Ukrainian.

Rybkina meticulously followed the instructions and proceeded to the Sberbank branch. However she was apprehended by a security guard before employing the Molotov cocktail, caught in the act of spraying green paint and exclaiming “Department DSU” (“The DSU Department”). The pensioner doesn’t know what this means, but the scammers probably asked her to shout “Slava ZSU” (“Glory to Armed Forces of Ukraine”) which she did not hear clearly; in other cases, victims of the scammers have shouted pro-Ukrainian slogans.

As a result of what happened, a criminal case was opened against Rybkina under the article of attempted damage to another person’s property. She was lucky and did not receive a real sentence, unlike other victims of scammers. Rybkina was given a two-year suspended sentence, but now has nowhere to live, has debts to the bank, and feels like an outcast in her homestown. Telephone scammers went unpunished. Who exactly is behind them is unknown.

According to the FSB, Ukrainian special services have been implicated in such cases. This assertion is bolstered by instances where the fraudsters instructed their victims to set fire to military registration and enlistment offices. Yet certain details in arson cases suggest provocation by the FSB.

You Might Also Like

Like this post? Get a weekly email digest + member-only deals

Some of Our Books

Driving Down Russia's Spine

Driving Down Russia's Spine

The story of the epic Spine of Russia trip, intertwining fascinating subject profiles with digressions into historical and cultural themes relevant to understanding modern Russia. 
Life Stories: Original Fiction By Russian Authors

Life Stories: Original Fiction By Russian Authors

The Life Stories collection is a nice introduction to contemporary Russian fiction: many of the 19 authors featured here have won major Russian literary prizes and/or become bestsellers. These are life-affirming stories of love, family, hope, rebirth, mystery and imagination, masterfully translated by some of the best Russian-English translators working today. The selections reassert the power of Russian literature to affect readers of all cultures in profound and lasting ways. Best of all, 100% of the profits from the sale of this book are going to benefit Russian hospice—not-for-profit care for fellow human beings who are nearing the end of their own life stories.
The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas

The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas

This exciting new trilogy by a Russian author – who has been compared to Orhan Pamuk and Umberto Eco – vividly recreates a lost world, yet its passions and characters are entirely relevant to the present day. Full of mystery, memorable characters, and non-stop adventure, The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas is a must read for lovers of historical fiction and international thrillers.  
Moscow and Muscovites

Moscow and Muscovites

Vladimir Gilyarovsky's classic portrait of the Russian capital is one of Russians’ most beloved books. Yet it has never before been translated into English. Until now! It is a spectactular verbal pastiche: conversation, from gutter gibberish to the drawing room; oratory, from illiterates to aristocrats; prose, from boilerplate to Tolstoy; poetry, from earthy humor to Pushkin. 
Jews in Service to the Tsar

Jews in Service to the Tsar

Benjamin Disraeli advised, “Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.” With Jews in Service to the Tsar, Lev Berdnikov offers us 28 biographies spanning five centuries of Russian Jewish history, and each portrait opens a new window onto the history of Eastern Europe’s Jews, illuminating dark corners and challenging widely-held conceptions about the role of Jews in Russian history.
Marooned in Moscow

Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.
Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

Stargorod is a mid-sized provincial city that exists only in Russian metaphorical space. It has its roots in Gogol, and Ilf and Petrov, and is a place far from Moscow, but close to Russian hearts. It is a place of mystery and normality, of provincial innocence and Black Earth wisdom. Strange, inexplicable things happen in Stargorod. So do good things. And bad things. A lot like life everywhere, one might say. Only with a heavy dose of vodka, longing and mystery.
Dostoyevsky Bilingual

Dostoyevsky Bilingual

Bilingual series of short, lesser known, but highly significant works that show the traditional view of Dostoyevsky as a dour, intense, philosophical writer to be unnecessarily one-sided. 
Russian Rules

Russian Rules

From the shores of the White Sea to Moscow and the Northern Caucasus, Russian Rules is a high-speed thriller based on actual events, terrifying possibilities, and some really stupid decisions.
Tolstoy Bilingual

Tolstoy Bilingual

This compact, yet surprisingly broad look at the life and work of Tolstoy spans from one of his earliest stories to one of his last, looking at works that made him famous and others that made him notorious. 
Faith & Humor: Notes from Muscovy

Faith & Humor: Notes from Muscovy

A book that dares to explore the humanity of priests and pilgrims, saints and sinners, Faith & Humor has been both a runaway bestseller in Russia and the focus of heated controversy – as often happens when a thoughtful writer takes on sacred cows. The stories, aphorisms, anecdotes, dialogues and adventures in this volume comprise an encyclopedia of modern Russian Orthodoxy, and thereby of Russian life.

About Us

Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.

Latest Posts

Our Contacts

Russian Life
73 Main Street, Suite 402
Montpelier VT 05602

802-223-4955