A self-proclaimed racist from Ukraine has pleaded guilty to murdering an elderly Muslim man and planting explosive devices outside mosques in central England in his one-man drive to start a race war.

25-year old Pavlo Lapshyn had just arrived in Britain in April to study and work in Birmingham.  But within days he stabbed to death 82-year-old Mohammed Saleem as the older man walked home from a mosque.

Weeks later he planted two bombs, which exploded near mosques in central England.  No one was injured in the blasts but police said chemicals and bomb-making equipment were found at his home following his arrest in July, suggesting further attacks would have followed.

Many British Muslims felt the media under-reported the crimes because Islam was the target, and cops do not discount it.  Assistant Chief Constable Marcus Beal of the West Midlands counter-terrorism unit said, “both the media and ourselves should reflect.”

Cops eventually found Lapshyn through examining CCTV footage from around his crimes.  As they investigated his laptop computer and social media pages, they found numerous references to Hitler and the Nazis;  American terrorist Timothy McVeigh who bombed the Oklahoma City Federal building in 1995;  And the racist rightwing book “The Turner Diaries”, which described a fictitious race war, a favorite book of McVeigh as well as London Nail Bomber David Copeland.

Lapshyn will be sentenced on Friday.