Odesa resident detained on suspicion of arson of a bank branch ordered by Russia

Police detained a 26-year-old resident of Odesa on suspicion of setting fire to a bank building on the first floor of a high-rise building in Kyiv district.

According to the press service of the Main Directorate of the National Police of Ukraine, the fire was reported to police and firefighters last month by an eyewitness who was driving by.

No one was injured. The firefighters extinguished the fire, which had already damaged the bank from the inside and partially the facade of the entire building, and law enforcement officers opened a criminal investigation into the incident.

The investigation led police to a 26-year-old resident of Odesa's Khadzhybey district who had been recruited by Russian special services. At least this is the conclusion investigators came to after examining the evidence. On the eve of the arson, the man met the girl through a chatbot in a popular messenger and arranged a meeting. However, she did not show up for the date, and instead the man received a call from an unknown person who introduced himself as an employee of one of the law enforcement agencies and said that his new acquaintance was a collaborator who had been working for the aggressor state and had recently been detained.

The unidentified man introduced himself as a colonel and offered the defendant to expose other accomplices of the traitor, who, according to him, were hiding in one of the city's banks and correcting enemy shelling of civilians. The cooperation consisted in setting fire to a financial institution, for which the arsonist was promised to be paid USD 1 thousand, of which he received only USD 100 for expenses.

Having agreed, the Odesa resident bought gasoline, and in the evening poured it at the bank's entrance, set it on fire, showed the curator the result via video, and then fled. Of course, the customer was not an employee of any Ukrainian law enforcement agency. According to the police, all the persons with whom the defendant communicated were participants in a single hostile scheme. The bank that he set on fire and which the customer chose as the object of the criminal attack was operating as intended and was not a headquarters for saboteurs.

<span>The police served the man a notice of suspicion of intentional damage to property by arson. If found guilty, the suspect faces imprisonment for 3 to 10 years.</span>

Кирило Бойко