On the night of March 20, 2024, unusually humid and mild in London, three people in their twenties pulled up at an industrial estate in the east of the city in a cherry-red Kia Picanto. They went inside, set fire to a warehouse, and filmed the blaze on a cellphone. The video of the flames consuming the premises ended up in the hands of another 20-year-old, Dylan Earl, who was reached via the Telegram messaging app by the Russian paramilitary organization Wagner, linked to the Kremlin, which had in turn recruited others to do the dirty work. One of the burned units contained humanitarian aid and Starlink satellite equipment destined for Ukraine. According to the British investigation, the three young men who lit the fuse did not know they were actually working for Russia.

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Moscow’s espionage in Europe has traditionally been associated with diplomats, bureaucrats, undercover intelligence officers and clandestine agents. Many of those actors remain. But since Vladimir Putin launched the war in Ukraine in February 2022, European governments have expelled hundreds of Russian officers, tightened counterintelligence measures, and severed some of the Kremlin’s valuable tentacles that it is now desperately trying to rebuild.

Russia is adapting parts of its operations in Europe to that new reality, several intelligence officials specializing in Moscow’s networks told this newspaper, and academic reports show similar trends. Rather than routinely sending its own agents — primarily from its military intelligence service, the GRU — and the units it has traditionally relied on, Moscow is outsourcing many of those activities. That ranges from recruiting students at universities worldwide to gather information, to sabotage, plots, or cybercriminal activity. Moscow denies the accusations.

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A study by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) and the think tank Globsec counted 151 known cases of sabotage, arson, attempted attacks, and other operations linked to Russia in Europe. That figure covers only February 2022 to February 2026, although the institution warns the real total is likely higher. Researchers identified 172 people involved in those cases; 95% had no formal ties to Russian intelligence services.

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The criminal connection

“Russian services are currently focusing more on the underworld, motivating and assigning tasks to individuals from that milieu,” [Jan Pad’ourek, former deputy head of Czech foreign intelligence and now a professor at CEVRO University in Prague], says. “It’s an effective, simple and cheap method that also enables rapid execution. The Russian services assume no responsibility for these people; if they are discovered, they are left entirely to their own devices. Many of the people deceived in this way are not even aware they are working for Russia.”

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Furthermore, another veteran official from a European agency who is still active and spoke on condition of anonymity says Russia’s intelligence services — which since Soviet times have had some links to organized crime — are increasingly turning to criminal organizations or people with criminal records for their hybrid operations in Europe. “At times, for significant cases, they provide information and logistics from Moscow or even involve an agent to verify,” the former Czech official notes.

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The point is not that there is a single European criminal network subordinated to the Kremlin. The evidence instead points to ad hoc, pragmatic relationships: when a service needs someone who can move around a country, gather information, intimidate a person or commit an act of sabotage, it can turn to intermediaries who have access to people willing to do it.

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The Kremlin has targeted dissidents for years, including on foreign soil. Opponents living abroad, especially in eastern Europe, regularly receive warnings from European authorities to exercise extreme caution. Two weeks ago, Washington charged five people who allegedly worked for Russian intelligence with planning to “carry out attacks and assassinations worldwide, including in the United States.” The State Department speaks of alleged plots involving surveillance, recruitment, and targeted killings. Recently, dissident and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov revealed that U.S. and Lithuanian security services had warned him that his life was in danger.

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Russia also targets journalists. In 2025, the United Kingdom sentenced six Bulgarian nationals to between five and 10 years in prison for spying for Moscow.

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Outsourcing has not removed the GRU from operations, but in some cases it may have distanced the service from the final link. Russian military intelligence can decide the target and coordinate a mission while intermediaries, recruiters, and low-level operatives carry it out.

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In that layer of spies, saboteurs, or hitmen that form the new tentacles the Kremlin uses in Europe, the person who places the explosive can be far removed from the one who decided the target. Intermediaries, recruiters, and operators who know only part of the mission can stand between them. Russian military intelligence can remain at the far end of that chain, providing instructions, logistics, or contacts while others assume the risk on the ground. The classical spy has not disappeared. In some operations, they simply no longer need to be there when the fuse is lit.

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