London – While the British detectives studied the Granulated CCTV video of the Burning Warehouse, there were at first reasons to think they were watching a covert operation of Russian intelligence.
The video of March 2024 of Cromwell Industrial Estate in eastern London showed two masked men pouring gasoline out of the warehouse door, which put it on fire with a burning rag and then fled at night.
The fact that the storage installation belonged to a Ukrainian logistics company that sends humanitarian aid and Starlink satellite dishes to Ukraine did not initially gave no alarm.
But 10 days later, when a warehouse belonging to the same company was burned in the capital of Spain, Madrid, the detectives realized that it was much larger than a simple case of fire caused.
The investigation and prosecution that would continue to shed light on what Western officials have warned is a dangerous Russian tactic: hiring local criminals to carry out acts of sabotage throughout Europe.
“It’s relatively new to see criminal representatives used in the name of foreign states,” CMDR. Dominic Murphy, head of the London Metropolitan Police Antiterrorist Unit, told the British station Sky News, NBC News international partner. “We have seen that this trend is developed during the last year or two, and I am sure we will continue to see that it develops during the next year or so.”
During the last year, NATO governments have accused Russian intelligence agencies of recruiting criminals remotely and using them to sow chaos.
The exact number of attacks is difficult to quantify. The accusations range from Great Britain to Estonia and the Czech Republic and Poland, where, according to the authorities, Russia paid a group to burn the largest shopping center in the country in May 2024.
Moscow denies all the accusations of sabotage, even in the case in London. “Russia has never been involved in sabotage activities against the United Kingdom and has no intention of doing so,” said the Russian embassy in the United Kingdom in a statement.
Calvin Bailey, a British Parliament member who is in the Select Defense Committee, said London’s attack fit into a pattern in which Russian agents used encryption and cryptocurrency applications to hire criminals while trying to mask their own participation.
“They are encouraged by money, but the use of Telegram and Bitcoin creates a plausible denial and allows Russians to maintain their distance,” Bailey said in a recent interview. “Hide the way, be it a trace of money or any of the connections.”
According to British prosecutors, the path that led to the burning of warehouse in eastern London began in March 2024, when a 21 -year -old British drug trafficker named Dylan Earl began communications with an anonymous account in Telegram with the user names “Privet Bot” and “Lucky Strike”.
The account was directed by an agent with the Wagner group, the Russian mercenary group that fought in Syria and Ukraine before launching a short -term riot against Russian President Vladimir Putin in June 2023, but that the Kremlin took him to Heel.
Earl expressed interest in joining Wagner as a rental weapon, saying: “I need a new beginning” after his life of small crime in the United Kingdom, according to documents published by prosecutors.
But the Russian manager said that Wagner had a different use for him: carrying out operations in Europe.
In the course of hundreds of messages, the Russian manager offered the young British criminal as much money and ideological encouragement to burn the warehouse, which could obtain approximately $ 8,000.
“I will make you rich. And I will grant you things that nobody else can. Citizens. Passports. Everything,” said the Russian manager in a message posted in the Privet Bot account. In another, the manager said: “You are our dagger in Europe.”
Earl was also encouraged to adopt a clandestine lifestyle when seeing the FX program “The America” on KGB spies that operate undercover in the United States.
“Look how they describe Russia. But you see the United Kingdom and the United States,” wrote the manager. “Homeless everywhere. Drugs, etc. is fearful brother. They want scared people.”
Earl knew he was dealing with a Wagner agent, but did not go back.
A few weeks after his initial messages, Earl had recruited a group of young complicit to carry out the warehouse attack. According to prosecutors, only one of them, Jake Reeves, 23, understood that they were starting the fire by Russian orders.
Neither Earl nor Reeves were present when the fire was initiated by Nii Kojo Mensah, 23, Jakeem Rose, 21, and Ungnius Asmena, 23, all of whom were sentenced by fire caused. Instead, they saw a live transmission of the fire in Facetime provided by Asmena.
The men who really started the fire believed it was simply a criminal act: Earl never told them that they were acting on Russian orders.
British detectives intensified hunting after they realized that they were probably dealing with an operation sponsored by the Russian State addressed to the Ukrainian business. They arrested EARL in early April and after accessing their phone, they quickly set their connection with the Wagner group.
Earl and Reeves declared themselves guilty of caused fires and crimes under British national security laws.
There is no suggestion that they were linked to other attacks in Europe or the groups that carry them.
“This case is a clear example of an organization linked to the Russian State that uses ‘representatives’, in this case, British men, to carry out a very serious criminal activity in this country in its name,” said Murphy, the head of the contribution, in a statement after the verdict.
The alleged criminal attacks backed by Russian throughout Europe are usually little sophisticated intelligence operations. Many of the plots, such as London’s, involve caused fire.
In June, a Colombian man was imprisoned for eight years in the Czech Republic after he was convicted of setting buses in Prague. Like Earl, they also gave orders by a Russian manager about the telegram messaging application and told him to register the fire, according to the Czech authorities.
This type of attack is relatively low risk to Russia, compared to sending their own professional agents to an increasingly hostile Europe.
But there is some evidence that Russian operational management had higher ambitions for its British rental gangsters.
The British police said that at the time of their arrest the surveillance operations had already begun for their next plot: kidnap a Russian dissident called Yevgeny Chichvarkin and setting fire to their leather restaurant with Michelin stars in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in London.
