Pictured: Romanian charged over Starmer firebomb attacks
A Romanian national charged in relation to fires that damaged properties and a car linked to Sir Keir Starmer has been pictured for the first time.
Stanislav Carpiuc, 26, has been charged with conspiracy to commit arson with intent to endanger life over fires which damaged properties and a car linked to the Prime Minister.
The Romanian appeared at Westminster magistrates' court on Tuesday wearing a light blue Adidas hoodie.
He is accused of conspiring with Roman Lavrynovych, a Ukrainian man who has already been charged with three counts of arson with intent to endanger life, and others unknown, over the incident.
Mr Carpiuc is understood to run a painting and decorating firm with his brother and is an aspiring actor and model.
Credit: Starnow.com/stanislavcarpiuc
He was arrested on Saturday by counter-terrorism officers from the Eastern Region Special Operations Unit as he attempted to leave the country and travel to Romania from London Luton Airport.
He was held in police custody after a warrant of further detention was obtained.
The court was told Mr Carpiuc, who has no previous convictions, was identified through messages found on Mr Lavrynovych's phone.
A 34-year-old man was also arrested on May 19 in the Chelsea area on suspicion of conspiracy to commit arson with intent to endanger life. He remains in police custody.
Two of the fires took place in Kentish Town, north London, one in the early hours of May 12 at the home where Sir Keir lived before he became Prime Minister and moved into Downing Street.
A car was set alight in the same street four days earlier on May 8. The other fire was on May 11 at the front door of a house converted into flats in Islington.
Mr Lavrynovych, 21, of Sydenham, south-east London, has already been charged with three counts of arson with intent to endanger life in connection with the fires. He denied the charges in a police interview.
He appeared in court on Friday and was remanded in custody until a further hearing at the Old Bailey scheduled for June 6.
The court was told he lived with his grandmother and was asleep at their property when police raided it early on Tuesday.
Mr Lavrynovych's father said that his son was a proud Ukrainian but had always admired the UK.
Mr Lavrynovych was initially living with his mother and younger siblings, but when his sister was unable to get a school place in London, she returned to Ukraine and he remained, living with his grandmother.
He set up a building company but had also signed with a modelling agency and was a regular at a gym in Sydenham.
Photographs of Mr Lavrynovych on social media show him doing press-ups in his bedroom. His father said Mr Lavyronvych had been happy and settled in the UK and had a girlfriend who was also Ukrainian.
Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


CNBC
2 hours ago
- CNBC
Ukraine drones attack on Moscow forces airport closure, Russia says
A Ukrainian drone attack targeting Moscow forced the closure of two of the key airports serving the capital, Russian authorities said early on Sunday. Russia air defence units destroyed nine Ukrainian drones heading towards Moscow by 0400 GMT, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on the Telegram messaging app. Emergency services were dispatched to the sites where drone debris fell in the overnight attack, Sobyanin said. He did not report any immediate damage. A Ukrainian drone attack also sparked a short-lived fire at the Azot chemical plant in the Tula region, injuring two people, and seven drones were destroyed over the Kaluga region, regional governors said. Both regions border the Moscow region to the south of the capital. Reuters could not independently verify the reports. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine. Russia's civil aviation authority Rosaviatsia said on Telegram that to ensure air safety it was halting flights at the Vnukovo and Domodedovo airports. Russia and Ukraine have increased their attacks in recent weeks while also returning to peace talks for the first time since the early days of the war that Russia launched against Ukraine in February 2022.
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Yahoo
Reform UK row as party chair calls new MP's burqa ban question ‘dumb'
A row has broken out in Reform UK after its newest MP called on the prime minister to ban the burqa, with the party's chair, Zia Yusuf, saying it was a 'dumb' question given that was not party policy. Sarah Pochin, who recently won the Runcorn and Helsby byelection, asked Keir Starmer in parliament on Wednesday: 'Given the prime minister's desire to strengthen strategic alignment with our European neighbours, will he in the interests of public safety follow the lead of France, Denmark, Belgium and others and ban the burqa?' Her call was met with cries of 'shame' from some MPs, and Reform later clarified it was not the party's policy but that it could be part of a debate. Nigel Farage, the party leader, also weighed in later on GB News, saying: 'I don't think face coverings in public places make sense, and we deserve a debate about this.' However, Yusuf responded to the idea on X on Thursday suggesting the question should not have been asked. 'Nothing to do with me. Had no idea about the question nor that it wasn't policy. Busy with other stuff. I do think it's dumb for a party to ask the PM if they would do something the party itself wouldn't do,' he wrote. A Reform spokesperson said Yusuf had not been criticising Pochin personally as he had said it was a 'dumb' thing for a party to do, and that all parties contained people who took different positions on policy matters. However, it is the latest sign of disharmony in Reform, months after Rupert Lowe, one of the party's MPs, was booted out after a disagreement with Yusuf and Farage. Lowe, who now sits as an independent, takes a more sympathetic approach to the far-right agitator Tommy Robinson and has a hardline view advocating mass deportation of people who have migrated to the UK illegally. On Thursday, Lowe backed a burqa ban, saying: 'The burqa is a political symbol: it represents a deeply patriarchal and unpleasant worldview that has no place in our society. We must defend the freedom of girls and women born into a culture where that suffocation isn't a choice, but a rule. Let's ban the burqa.' The idea was also endorsed by Nick Timothy, a Tory MP and former chief of staff to Theresa May, who said on X: 'The burqa is as British as Jeddah and yes it should be banned.'


Boston Globe
11 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Russia pummels Kharkiv with drones and bombs, Ukraine says
On Saturday afternoon, Russia dropped two more glide bombs on the city, killing at least one more resident and injuring at least 16 others, Terekhov said. Advertisement Photographs released by Ukraine's emergency services showed the upper floors of a residential block ablaze after the overnight strike, with white smoke pouring into the early morning sky. In other images, rescuers sifted through the charred wreckage of a gutted apartment. Parts of the photos were blurred, likely to hide the remains of two people killed in that strike, according to the rescuers. A third person died elsewhere in Kharkiv, and about 20 others were injured in the assault. Advertisement The local prosecutor's office said Saturday afternoon that six people were most likely still trapped under the rubble of an industrial facility in Kharkiv that was struck during the overnight attack. The attacks Saturday came as Russian forces about 100 miles north of Kharkiv pushed deeper into Ukraine's northeastern Sumy region, seizing two more villages and advancing their effort to carve out a buffer zone along the Russia-Ukraine border. Even in Kharkiv, a city of 1.3 million that over the years has learned to live with near-daily Russian bombardments, Saturday's attacks were a clear sign of Russia's strategy to intensify air assaults in a bid to overwhelm and break through Ukraine's air defenses. They came just a day after Russia launched one of its biggest air assaults of the war across Ukraine, involving more than 400 drones and more than 40 missiles, in what Russia described as retaliation for Ukraine's audacious attacks on its strategic bomber bases last weekend. President Donald Trump this past week compared the dual air assaults between Russia and Ukraine to 'two young children fighting like crazy.' 'They hate each other, and they're fighting in a park, and you try and pull them apart,' Trump said Thursday in an Oval Office news conference. 'They don't want to be pulled. Sometimes you're better off letting them fight for a while and then pulling them apart.' In an interview with ABC News released Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy responded to the comment. 'We are not kids with Putin at the playground in the park,' he said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'He is a murderer who came to this park to kill the kids.' In April, a Russian missile struck a playground in Zelenskyy's hometown, Kryvyi Rih, killing 19 civilians, including nine children. It was the deadliest strike against children since the beginning of the war, according to the United Nations. Advertisement Russia's intensified attacks have come alongside a new offensive in the east and in the northeastern Sumy region. The push into Sumy follows Russian forces driving Ukrainian troops back from parts of Russia's Kursk region, just across the border from Sumy. To prevent future incursions into Kursk, Putin announced last month that Russian forces would launch an offensive in Sumy to create a buffer zone along the border. In the past three weeks, Russian troops have seized about 10 villages in the area, gaining control of roughly 75 square miles of territory. 'It's clear this is already an offensive on Sumy region -- a full-scale offensive,' said Andrii, a 44-year-old company intelligence commander fighting there who declined to be identified with his full name for security reasons and due to military protocol. He said he saw the offensive not only as an effort to establish the buffer zone that Putin called for, but also as a strategy to pin down Ukrainian forces and prevent their redeployment to other front-line hot spots in the east. Andrii said Russian troops were currently pushing toward the village of Khotin, 6 miles from the border. If they seize it, he warned, the situation could turn critical. Khotin sits on high ground and lies less than 12 miles from the city of Sumy, the regional administrative center, close enough for Russian forces to strike it with drones and artillery. Sumy is home to about 250,000 people. More than 200 villages and settlements have been evacuated from the Sumy region over the past year because of the fighting. Advertisement This article originally appeared in