Latvia / 2024-02-28-lv-1
/ date of the event
At about 1am on 28 February 2024 the perpetrator smashed the first-floor window of the director's office at the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia with a home-made hammer and threw in a bottle of incendiary mixture; the fire covered about 0.5 square metres, rooms and equipment were damaged (property worth over 10,000 euros according to the indictment) and nobody was injured. Police detained the perpetrator on 1 March and the intermediary in the following days; according to the indictment the orderer was Konstantīns Engels, serving a sentence in Daugavpils prison, who promised 4,500 dollars by phone for finding an executor, who agreed for 2,000 euros. On 25 March 2025 Riga City Court sentenced the three men to between four and a half years and six years and two months in prison; the judgment was not yet final. The State Security Service (VDD) examined a possible action in Russia's interests, but in September 2024 the prosecution said no evidence had been obtained that the arson was carried out on the orders of Russian services; a journalistic investigation by dossier.center and TV3's "Nekā personīga" attributed supervision of the operation to a GRU officer. Who stood behind the orderer remains unestablished.
unresolved
The case was looked at and not settled, or the findings are disputed or have been rejected.
Rīgas pilsētas tiesa / 2025-03-25 / carrying out the act
The court convicted the orderer (a prison inmate), the intermediary and the executor. Nothing in the reporting of the judgment indicates a court finding on the involvement of a foreign state; the judgment settles who threw the bottle and who paid for it, not who stood behind the orderer.
finality not established
Prokuratura Łotwy (za LETA) / 2024-09-04 / carrying out the act
The prosecution stated that at that stage no evidence had been obtained that the museum arson was carried out on the orders of Russian special services. That is neither an attribution nor an exclusion; it is a statement that evidence was lacking.
dossier.center i TV3 „Nekā personīga” / 2024-09-29 / carrying out the act
A journalistic investigation reported that the arson was a Russian services operation supervised from Russia by GRU officer Vladimir Lipchenko under the pseudonym "Wlodek Lyakh". That is a journalistic finding, confirmed by neither the prosecution nor the court.
No casualties reported.
Riga City Court judgment: Engels 6 years and 2 months, Razmerics 6 years, Lukjanovičs 4 years and 6 months in prison, plus compensation (730 euros material and 1,800 euros moral damages, 5,151 euros to Valsts nekustamie īpašumi). The judgment could be appealed to the Riga Regional Court.
Latvijas Okupācijas muzejs / 2024-03-01 / primary source
supports: the record, that it happened, the date, the location, the impact
The Art Newspaper / 2024-03-01 / secondary source
supports: the record
Apollo.lv / LETA / 2024-09-04 / secondary source
supports: the record, the attribution, the impact
Neatkarīgā Rīta Avīze (za TV3 „Nekā personīga” i dossier.center) / 2024-09-29 / secondary source
supports: the attribution, the record
Apollo.lv / LETA / 2025-03-26 / secondary source
supports: the attribution, the impact, the record
Baltic News Network / 2025-03-26 / secondary source
supports: the record, the date, the attribution