Moscow is using telegrams to recruit cheap and “one-time” agents to carry out sabotage attacks in Europe, according to European security officials. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the Kremlin has launched a campaign of “destruction, arson and false information”, sometimes focusing on “specific targets” related to supporting Kiev, but is often “only intended to cause chaos and uneasiness among the enemies of the West”. Observer.
Despite Russia’s “subversion, destruction and assassination” project “longer earlier”, “the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has seen a surge in such attacks over the past three years. telegraph.
Arson and emoji
The new unit in the suburbs of Moscow is located in the “spread glass and steel complex” in the suburbs of Moscow, known as the “aquarium” Wall Street Journal. Euphemistically known as the Department of Special Tasks, it’s overseen by Col. Gen. Andrey Vladimirovich Averyanov, a vegetable of Russia’s Chechen wars, and his dependty, Lt. Gen. Ivan Sergeevich Kasianenko, who is believed to have co-ordinated the UK operation to poison Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia.
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Anonymous recruiters used telegrams and similar platforms to invite people from European countries to participate in the fight against Ukraine’s Western allies. “On the ground, it is recruited online, and while some of them “know exactly what they are doing and why they are doing,” many are not aware that they “finally work for Moscow.”
For example, when a man known only as Serhiy S. was arrested in Poland, the officer found a firefighter cube, a juice bottle filled with paraffin, a lighter, two knifes, a mini hand saw and a mask. Desire for money, he was recruited by telegram and asked for a shopping mall and industrial heritage in Wroclaw. Once the “right place” was reached, he burned it, paying $4,000 (£3,000) for it.
In another incident, a secret journalist pretended to be a 26-year-old Estonian who was keen to earn extra cash was shot at surveillance military bases, shot at NATO vehicles, and even murdered in a $10,000 murder case (£7,500). Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). The recruiter’s behavior was “brisk” and sometimes even rude, but some of his message was that the smiley emoji “accompanies it desperately.”
Garbage fishing
Indrek Kannik, director of the Estonian International Center for Defense and Security, will recruit saboteurs on social media, which is “garbage fishing” because of its low success rate. But from a Russian perspective, these “so-called low-level agents are cheap, fast and safe,” the German security agency told OCCRP. They often “don’t even know who they are working for.”
The person in charge of MI6 Richard Moore told A Financial Times Group. He said the Kremlin “cannot use its own people”, so “they have to be related to criminals.” But while criminals “do things for cash,” they are “unreliable” or “especially professional.” “Often we can roll them up very effectively,” he said.
As for Serhi, he was sentenced to eight years in prison even though he had not completed the arson plan. The judge said it was “a clear and clear signal to you and all potential candidates that it would not be worth it”. Indeed, European security officials told Observer that Seri should not expect his Russian pay prime minister to help. “These people are one-off, and Moscow doesn’t care about them.”
