Former Wagner operatives help Russia organize sabotage across Europe – FT

The Financial Times (FT) stated this in an article, according to Ukrinform.

The status of Wagner members has remained uncertain since June 2023, following a failed mutiny against Russia's top military leadership that led to repression and the death of the group's founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin. However, Wagner recruiters who previously specialized in enlisting men from remote Russian regions to fight in Ukraine have reportedly been given a new task – recruiting economically vulnerable Europeans to carry out sabotage operations on NATO territory, officials say.

Over the past two years, the Kremlin has expanded a campaign of destabilization and sabotage across Europe aimed at undermining Western support for Ukraine and fueling social unrest. After facing a significant reduction in covert agents following waves of diplomatic expulsions from European capitals, Russia's military intelligence agency, the GRU, and the Federal Security Service (FSB) have increasingly relied on former Wagner personnel to recruit so-called "disposable" agents for missions in Europe, Western officials said.

According to senior European intelligence officials, operatives receive assignments ranging from setting fire to politicians' cars and warehouses storing aid for Ukraine to posing as Nazi propagandists. Recruited individuals are typically paid, often marginalized, and sometimes lacking a clear sense of purpose. Wagner already had an established network of propagandists and recruiters who "speak their language," one European official noted.

Russian intelligence services usually try to maintain at least two "intermediary" layers between themselves and the agents they seek to recruit, the official added.

The FSB, meanwhile, has traditionally turned to criminal networks and segments of the Russian diaspora in neighboring countries, though these channels have proven less effective for large-scale recruitment, sources told the newspaper.

Active recruitment of Europeans has been facilitated by Wagner's significant online presence and that of its supporters on social media. The group's Telegram channels, in particular, were described as surprisingly skillfully and professionally designed, according to another European official.

Prigozhin previously oversaw Russia's most notorious "troll factory" in St. Petersburg, which began spreading disinformation to Western audiences more than a decade ago.

The role of Wagner's network in Russia's sabotage campaign has been under close scrutiny by European intelligence and security services from the outset. Social media accounts linked to Wagner were reportedly involved in recruiting a group of British nationals in late 2023 who set fire to a warehouse in East London storing aid for Ukraine.

Following that incident, European agencies uncovered a much broader network of Wagner-linked "disposable" agents across Europe. Western security officials say they currently hold an advantage: although Russian recruiters benefit from scale and lower costs by using Wagner networks to enlist amateur saboteurs, they lack professionalism and operational secrecy. More attacks have reportedly been thwarted than successfully carried out.

As previously reported, Russia continues to strengthen ties with African states, sending officials to the continent who can no longer be posted to Western countries.