According to Western intelligence agencies, recruiters and propagandists who previously worked for the Russian PMC Wagner have become the main tool for the Kremlin to organize sabotage throughout Europe.
Points of attention
- Former Wagner operatives are now being utilized by the Kremlin to organize sabotage in Europe, recruiting underprivileged Europeans for carrying out missions on NATO territory.
- The Wagner Group received a new task following a failed uprising in June 2023, with recruiters focusing on recruiting disposable agents to execute sabotage operations across Europe.
- Russian intelligence services are leveraging the Wagner network to destabilize Western
The Wagner Group received a new task from the Kremlin in Europe
The status of the Wagner Group has remained uncertain since June 2023, following a failed uprising against the Russian military high command, which led to repression and the death of the group's founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin.
This was reported by FT, citing sources.
However, Wagner recruiters, who specialized in recruiting men from the Russian hinterland to fight in Ukraine, have been given a new task — recruiting underprivileged Europeans to carry out sabotage operations on NATO territory, officials say.
Over the past two years, the Kremlin has expanded its campaign of destabilization and sabotage across Europe, aimed at undermining Western support for Ukraine and spreading social unrest. But faced with a sharp reduction in the number of undercover agents after a series of expulsions of diplomats from European capitals, the heads of Russia’s military intelligence (GRU) and FSB are actively recruiting former Wagner employees, seeking “disposable” agents to carry out missions in Europe, Western officials said.
According to senior European intelligence officials, agents receive tasks from Wagner operatives to do everything from setting fire to politicians' cars and warehouses with aid for Ukraine to posing as Nazi propagandists.
Typically, recruits are paid, often marginalized, and sometimes without a clear purpose. Wagner had a ready-made network of propagandists and recruiters who “speak their language,” one European official noted.
According to him, Russian intelligence services usually seek to establish at least two "intermediate" levels between themselves and the agents they want to involve in cooperation.
At the same time, the FSB, as a rule, turns to criminal networks and the Russian diaspora, with which it has established ties in Russia's near abroad, but they have proven to be less effective in mass recruitment, the publication's sources added.
The active recruitment of Europeans was made possible by the significant online presence of the Wagner PMC itself and its supporters on social media. In particular, the group's Telegram channels were "surprisingly skillfully and skillfully designed," a second European official noted.
And the former leader of the Wagner group, Prigozhin, was once responsible for managing Russia's most famous "troll factory" in St. Petersburg, which began spreading disinformation among Western audiences more than a decade ago.
The Wagner network’s role in Russia’s sabotage campaign has been under close scrutiny by European intelligence and security services from the outset. In particular, it was social media accounts run by Wagner that were responsible for recruiting a group of Britons in late 2023 who set fire to an East London warehouse storing aid for Ukraine.
After this sabotage, European agencies gradually uncovered a much wider network of “disposable” Wagner agents throughout Europe.
At the same time, Western security agencies have a certain advantage: while Russian recruiters win in scale and cost by using Wagner to recruit amateur saboteurs, they are inferior in competence and secrecy. So far, more attacks have been prevented than the agents have managed to organize, Western officials say.
