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European intelligence officials are increasingly alarmed that a sabotage campaign blamed on Russia is escalating in severity, with untrained operatives setting fires, planting explosives, and plotting attacks across the continent according to an AP report.
The warning follows a British court ruling on Tuesday that found three men guilty of arson for a 2024 warehouse fire in east London, a site used to store equipment for Ukraine. Prosecutors said the plot was directed by Russian intelligence services as part of a broader campaign of disruption across Europe.
A truck driver resting in his cab heard flames crackling at a warehouse in east London storing equipment for Ukraine just before midnight in March 2024. When he grabbed a fire extinguisher and leaped out, he realized the blaze was too large and retreated as police arrived to evacuate nearby residents.
About 30 minutes after the fire started, Dylan Earl, a British man who organized the arson, received a message from his Russian handler. "Excellent," it read in Russian, according to court documents.
On Tuesday, a British court found three men guilty of arson in the plot that prosecutors said was masterminded by Russia's intelligence services. The incident is part of a broader campaign of disruption across Europe that Western officials blame on Moscow and its proxies.
The Associated Press has documented more than 70 incidents linked to Russia since Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Four European intelligence officials told AP they're worried the risk of serious injury or death is rising as untrained saboteurs set fires near homes and businesses, plant explosives, or build bombs.
AP's tracking shows 12 incidents of arson or serious sabotage last year compared with two in 2023 and none in 2022. "When you start a campaign, it creates its own dynamic and gets more and more violent over time," said a senior European intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Kremlin did not reply to requests for comment on the British case. Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov previously said the Kremlin has never been shown "any proof" supporting accusations Russia is running a sabotage campaign and said "certainly we definitely reject any allegations."
Most saboteurs accused of working on behalf of Russia are foreign nationals, including Ukrainians. They include young people with no criminal records who are frequently hired for a few thousand dollars, intelligence officials said to AP.
The senior official said Russia has been forced to rely increasingly on such amateurs since hundreds of Moscow's spies were expelled from Western countries following the 2018 operation to poison former Russian intelligence officer Sergey Skripal in the U.K. Russia "had to change the modus operandi, from using cadre officers to using proxies, making a more flexible, deniable system," the official said.
Documents from the London warehouse trial offered a rare glimpse into recruitment methods. Among them were transcripts of messages between a man prosecutors identified as a Russian intelligence operative and Earl, who was active on Telegram channels associated with the Wagner group.
The recruiter, using the handle Privet Bot, posted multiple times in a Telegram channel asking for people to join the battle against the West. Once connected, the recruiter and Earl communicated predominantly in Russian with Earl using Google to translate, according to screenshots on his phone.
The recruiter told Earl, 21, that he was "wise and clever despite being young" and suggested he watch the television show "The Americans" about Soviet KGB intelligence officers undercover in the U.S. "It will be your manual," the recruiter wrote.
In one message, Earl boasted of unproven ties to the Irish Republican Army and "murderers, kidnappers, soldiers, drug dealers, fraudsters, car thieves," promising to be "the best spy you have ever seen."
Earl and another man eventually recruited others who went to the warehouse the night of the fire. One man poured out a jerry can of gasoline before igniting a rag and throwing it on the fuel while another recorded the arson on his phone.
The warehouse housed a mail-order company that sent supplies to Ukraine, including StarLink devices that provide internet by satellite and are used by the country's military. Around half the warehouse's contents were destroyed in the fire, which burned just meters from the truck driver and a short distance from homes and an apartment block.
More than 60 firefighters responded to the blaze. "I started knocking on everyone's doors screaming and shouting at the top of my lungs, 'There's a fire, there's a fire, get out!'" said Tessa Ribera Fernandez, who lives in the block with her 2-year-old son.
When Russia's disruption campaign started following the Ukraine invasion, vandalism including defacing monuments or graffiti was more common. "Over the last year, it has developed to arson and assassination," the senior European intelligence official said.
Other incidents linked to Russia with potential to cause serious injury or death include a plot to put explosive devices on cargo planes and plots to set fire to shopping centers in Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania.
Lithuanian prosecutors said a Ukrainian teenager was part of a plan to plant a bomb in an IKEA store just outside Vilnius last year, sparking a massive fire in the early hours of the morning.
Shortly after the London fire, Earl and his co-conspirators discussed what they would do next, according to court messages. They talked about burning down London businesses owned by Evgeny Chichvarkin, a Russian tycoon who delivered supplies to Ukraine.
Earl said Hedonism Wines and the restaurant Hide should be turned to "ashes." In the messages, Earl vacillated between saying they didn't "need" any casualties and that if they "wanted to hurt someone," they could put nails in a homemade explosive device.
The Russian recruiter told Earl after the fire that he "rushed into burning these warehouses without my approval" and that "it will be impossible to pay for this arson." Still, the recruiter told Earl he wanted to target more businesses with links to Ukraine.
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The phenomenon reflects what intelligence officials noted about middlemen sometimes suggesting ideas that are each "a little better" and more dangerous. While Russia's intelligence services try to keep "strict operational control," sometimes "control does not hold," said Lotta Hakala, a senior analyst at the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service.
"You are our dagger in Europe and we will be sharpening you carefully," the recruiter wrote to Earl. "Then we will start using you in serious battles."
The escalating campaign has prompted increased security measures across European nations as officials work to counter the growing threat from Russian-directed sabotage operations.
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