Police and security officials said they were victims of “phone scammers” and were not anti-war protesters.
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Authorities have not formally commented on the increasing number of attacks, though some officials have suggested the incidents may involve foreign interference, without providing further details or supporting evidence.
State news agency Tass on Wednesday quoted an unnamed FSB official in the Urals who said the scammers were based “abroad” and targeted “vulnerable citizens or people who found themselves in difficult circumstances and are easy to influence”.
The FSB official said the scammers had often persuaded their victims to hand over banking details, or take out a loan, before convincing them to attack a recruitment office in order to recoup their losses.
“Those 80-something grandpas – they stood by the building, struggling with their phones: one couldn’t figure out how to turn on the camera, the other could not answer a phone call,” the Ostorozhno Moskva newspaper quoted an eyewitness of an arson in Moscow’s suburb of Podolsk as saying on Tuesday.
A Russian recruit hugs his mother at a military recruitment centre in Volgograd.Credit: AP
“And at some point, one of the grandpas came forward, took something out, threw it – and bang.”
The two elderly men involved in the attack were reportedly arrested by police. The same office was attacked again two days later.
Reports from across Russia, where phone scamming is a common phenomenon, with fraudsters primarily targeting elderly and vulnerable people, suggested a similar pattern.
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In Russian-occupied Crimea, police on Monday arrested a school teacher who had hurled a bottle with flammable substance at a recruitment office in the town of Feodosiya.
“She told the police that she was guided by individuals who called her on the phone and introduced themselves as the security department of a bank and law enforcement officers,” local police said in a statement.
On Tuesday, a 66-year-old supermarket clerk was caught red-handed as she threw a Molotov cocktail at a recruitment office in the centre of St Petersburg. Another office was attacked in the city on the same day.
Fontanka, a well-respected local media outlet, quoted unnamed sources as saying that the woman was the victim of a months-long scamming operation.
The elderly woman was reportedly approached by fraudsters who initially told her that someone had used her identity to take out a loan in her name.
She was later allegedly convinced to take out a loan herself and was then promised it would be written off if she were to set an enlistment centre on fire.
The supermarket clerk was reportedly sent step-by-step guidelines on how to make a Molotov cocktail and avoid getting caught by police.
Telegraph, London
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