{"id":253889,"date":"2025-07-10T16:12:31","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T16:12:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/253889\/"},"modified":"2025-07-10T16:12:31","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T16:12:31","slug":"russian-sabotage-campaigns-growing-more-dangerous-europe-officials-warn-national","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/253889\/","title":{"rendered":"Russian sabotage campaigns growing more dangerous, Europe officials warn – National"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was almost midnight when a truck driver resting in his cab heard the crackling of flames at a warehouse in east London storing equipment for Ukraine. He grabbed a fire extinguisher and leapt out \u2014 but realized the blaze was too big and retreated.<\/p>\n

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When police arrived, they banged on the doors of a nearby apartment building, shouting at residents to evacuate. Parents grabbed children and ran into the street.<\/p>\n

About 30 minutes after the fire started, Dylan Earl, a British man who admitted to organizing the arson, received a message from a man U.K. authorities say was his Russian handler.<\/p>\n

\u201cExcellent,\u201d it read in Russian.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, a British court found three men guilty of arson<\/a> in the March 2024 plot that prosecutors said was masterminded by Russia\u2019s intelligence services \u2014 part of a campaign of disruption across Europe that Western officials blame on Moscow and its proxies. Two other men, including Earl,<\/a> previously pleaded guilty to organizing the arson.<\/p>\n

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The fire is one of more than 70 incidents linked to Russia that The Associated Press has documented since Moscow\u2019s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.<\/p>\n

Four European intelligence officials told AP they\u2019re worried the risk of serious injury or even death is rising as untrained saboteurs set fires near homes and businesses, plant explosives or build bombs. AP\u2019s tracking shows 12 incidents of arson or serious sabotage last year compared with two in 2023 and none in 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you start a campaign, it creates its own dynamic and gets more and more violent over time,\u201d said one of the officials, who holds a senior position at a European intelligence agency. The official, like two others, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss security matters.<\/p>\n

The Kremlin did not reply to a request for comment on the British case. Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov previously said the Kremlin has never been shown \u201cany proofs\u201d supporting accusations Russia is running a sabotage campaign and said \u201ccertainly we definitely reject any allegations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\tRecruiting young amateurs\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Most of the saboteurs accused of working on behalf of Russia are foreign, including Ukrainians. They include young people with no criminal records who are frequently hired for a few thousand dollars, the intelligence officials said.<\/p>\n

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The senior official said Russia has been forced to rely increasingly on such amateurs since hundreds of Moscow\u2019s spies were expelled from Western countries following an operation to poison former Russian intelligence officer Sergey Skripal in the U.K. in 2018. That led to the death of a British woman \u2014 and a major response from the West.<\/p>\n

Russia \u201chad to change the modus operandi, from using cadre officers to using proxies, making a more flexible, deniable system,\u201d the official said.<\/p>\n

Documents shared during the London warehouse trial offered a rare glimpse into how young men are recruited.<\/p>\n

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Among those were transcripts of messages between a man prosecutors said was a Russian intelligence operative and his recruit, Earl, who was active on Telegram channels associated with the Wagner group \u2014 a mercenary organization whose operations were taken over by Russia\u2019s Defense Ministry in 2023.<\/p>\n

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Russian military intelligence \u2014 acting through Wagner \u2014 was likely behind the plot, said Kevin Riehle, a lecturer in Intelligence and National Security at Brunel University in London.<\/p>\n

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The recruiter \u2014 who used the handle Privet Bot \u2014 posted multiple times in a Telegram channel asking for people to join the battle against the West, Riehle told the court.<\/p>\n

Once connected, the recruiter and Earl communicated predominantly in Russian with Earl using Google to translate, according to screenshots on his phone. Their messages ranged from the deadly serious to the almost comic.<\/p>\n

The recruiter told Earl, 21, that he was \u201cwise and clever despite being young,\u201d and suggested he watch the television show \u201cThe Americans\u201d \u2014 about Soviet KGB intelligence officers undercover in the U.S.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will be your manual,\u201d the recruiter wrote.<\/p>\n

In one message, Earl boasted of \u2014 unproven \u2014 ties to the Irish Republican Army, to \u201cmurderers, kidnappers, soldiers, drug dealers, fraudsters, car thieves,\u201d promising to be \u201cthe best spy you have ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earl and another man eventually recruited others who went to the warehouse the night of the fire. Earl never met the men, according to messages shared in court, and it\u2019s unclear whether he ever visited the site himself.<\/p>\n

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Once at the warehouse, one of the men poured out a jerrycan of gasoline before igniting a rag and throwing it on the fuel. Another recorded the arson on his phone. It was also captured on CCTV.<\/p>\n

The warehouse was the site of a mail order company that sent supplies to Ukraine, including StarLink devices that provide internet by satellite and are used by the country\u2019s military.<\/p>\n

Around half the warehouse\u2019s contents were destroyed in the fire, which burned just meters (yards) from Yevhen Harasym, the truck driver, and a short distance from an outbuilding in the yard of a home and the apartment block.<\/p>\n

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