The orchestrator of a terror attack on a warehouse providing aid to Ukraine was “easy meat” for sophisticated Wagner Group operatives working for the Russian state, a court has heard. Dylan Earl, 21, has admitted planning the arson attack on industrial units in Leyton, east London, on March 20 last year. It took eight fire crews, with 60 firefighters, to get the blaze under control and caused about £1 million of damage. Earl, from Elmesthorpe, Leicestershire, was working under the instruction of the proscribed Wagner Group, the Old Bailey was told. He and Jake Reeves, 24, from Croydon, south London, targeted the warehouse because it was being used to supply humanitarian aid and StarLink satellite equipment to Ukraine. They plotted more arson attacks on a restaurant and wine shop in Mayfair and the kidnap of the owner, the wealthy Russian dissident Evgeny Chichvarkin. On Thursday, Earl and Reeves appeared in the dock of the Old Bailey to be sentenced along with four other young men. Mitigating, Paul Hynes KC said “He was easy meat for the very sophisticated operatives of the Wagner Group acting as proxies for the Russian Federation.” He described Earl as an “easy puppet in the hands of others” who sought “praise, importance and significance” and saw the world through the “prism of online gaming”. Mr Hynes said: “Our primary submission he is a sad individual who at the time of the commission of the offence was in his early 20s.