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Recruiters and propagandists who previously worked for Russia’s Wagner Group have emerged as the main conduits for Kremlin-organized sabotage attacks in Europe, according to Western intelligence officials.
The status of this fighting group has been uncertain since a failed mutiny against top Russian military officials in June 2023, which led to the death of its founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin.
But Wagner recruiters who specialized in convincing young men from Russia’s hinterland to fight in Ukraine have been given a new assignment — recruiting economically vulnerable Europeans to commit violence on NATO soil, officials said.
Russia’s military intelligence agency (GRU) is “using the talent it has available to it,” said a Western intelligence official, referring to the Wagner network.
Both the GRU and Russia’s domestic intelligence agency (FSB) have become highly active in recruiting “disposable” agents to spread chaos in Europe.
Over the past two years, the Kremlin has expanded a campaign of disruption and sabotage across Europe, aimed at weakening the resolve of Western powers in support of Ukraine and creating social unrest.
However, faced with greatly reduced deployments of secret agents to Europe following a round of diplomatic expulsions by EU capitals, Moscow’s spy chiefs have increasingly turned to proxies to do their bidding.
Senior European intelligence officials have told the FT that for the GRU, the Wagner network has proven a particularly effective – if crude – tool for doing this.
Agents are tasked by Wagner’s henchmen with everything from arson to politicians’ cars and warehouses containing aid to Ukraine to posing as Nazi propagandists.
Those recruited generally do so for the money and are often marginalized individuals, sometimes lacking purpose or direction.
Wagner had a ready-made network of propagandists and recruiters who “speak his language”, said one European official.
Russia’s intelligence agencies generally want to have at least two “cut-out” layers between themselves and the agents they want to work for, the official said. “They always want to have some degree of denial… and Wagner and the individuals who were part of this… have a long and close relationship working for the GRU in this way.”
The FSB has meanwhile turned to criminal and migrant networks with which it has built ties in Russia’s near abroad, but these have been less effective in recruiting, he said.
Wagner and his supporters already had a significant online output in social media channels aimed at Russians, which has been parlayed with relative ease into a more internationally focused effort.
The Telegram channels used by the group in particular are surprisingly efficient and adept at presenting themselves, a second European official said. “They know their audience,” he said.
Prigozhin was also responsible for running the most widely known Russian “troll farm” – the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency – which began targeting Western audiences with misinformation a decade ago.
The Wagner Network’s role in Russia’s subversion campaign has been under the scrutiny of European intelligence and security agencies since the beginning. For example, social media accounts run by Wagner were responsible for recruiting a group of Britons in late 2023.
21-year-old petty criminal Dylan Earl was recruited by Wagner through social media. In March 2024, after recruiting four more youths himself, Earl burns down a warehouse in East London. He was convicted last year and sentenced to 23 years in prison.
Justice Cheema-Grubb said in his sentencing remarks, “The hidden hand of the Internet delivered results as anonymous recruiters operating through proxy Internet chat rooms, usually on encrypted platforms, found young men from across the United Kingdom who were willing to undergo a form of radicalization and betray their country for easy money.”
In the wake of that attack, European agencies are slowly building a picture of a more extensive network of Wagner “disposables” across Europe.
In doing so, security officials have at least one advantage: What Russia’s spies gain in scale and cost by using proxies like Wagner to recruit prominent amateur saboteurs, they lose in efficiency and secrecy. So far, more attacks have been foiled than have been successful.
