IKEA store fire (Vilnius) – prosecuted as terror act

In the early hours of 9 May 2024, a fire broke out at an IKEA store on the outskirts of Vilnius. According to Lithuanian prosecutors, an incendiary device fitted with a timing mechanism had been concealed among flammable goods inside the store the previous evening and ignited at around 04:00. The shop was closed, but roughly ten people were inside; staff and firefighters extinguished the blaze, which IKEA later valued at some 485,000 euros in damages.

Lithuanian prosecutors classified the arson as a terrorist act and referred the case to the Vilnius Regional Court under charges including committing a terrorist act, training for terrorist purposes and unlawful handling of explosives. They identified the immediate perpetrators as two Ukrainian citizens under the age of 20, one of them a minor at the time. One suspect, Danylo Bardadym, who was 17, was arrested in Lithuania on 13 May 2024; the second was detained in Poland.

Prosecutors say the perpetrators were recruited online through encrypted messaging and that the masterminds were linked to Russia through intermediaries connected to its military intelligence and security services. The suspects allegedly agreed at a meeting in Warsaw to set fire to shopping centres in Lithuania and Latvia for 10,000 euros and a BMW car. Lithuanian and Polish authorities have linked the case to the 12 May 2024 fire that destroyed the Marywilska 44 shopping centre in Warsaw. In November 2025 Bardadym was convicted and sentenced to three years and four months.

The Vilnius IKEA arson fits an assessed pattern of Russian-directed hybrid sabotage targeting Western commercial and logistics infrastructure, using low-cost incendiary attacks carried out by young, financially motivated recruits hired online and kept at arm's length from their handlers. Lithuanian prosecutors attribute the operation to people tied to Russian military intelligence and security services, and connect it to the near-simultaneous Warsaw Marywilska fire, indicating a coordinated cross-border campaign rather than isolated vandalism. The terrorism prosecution and conviction signal a hardening legal response across the region, though the disposable nature of the recruited perpetrators leaves the senior organisers beyond reach.