Login
Russian spies 'recruiting UK teenagers' to carry out acts of violence and sabotage
Russian spies are targeting violence-obsessed UK teenagers and offering them money, guns and training on making explosives and poisons, a new investigation suggests.
It marks a worrying new escalation in Russian-linked use of “disposable” agents in the West to carry out acts of violence, sabotage and intelligence-gathering.
Analysis of open source material has found online networks have been used to attempt to recruit young people in Britain willing to carry out acts of violence.
At least two incidents have already taken place in Britain in connection with one of the Russia-linked groups, The i Paper can reveal.
It comes as Russia’s “grey zone” warfare tactics intensify across Europe as part of Vladimir Putin’s aim of undermining his Nato adversaries while stopping short of outright conflict.
Suspected Russian hybrid attacks in Europe include arson, cyber hacks and sabotage of critical undersea communication cables.
The online groups where the Russian-linked actors are targeting youngsters are so-called “Com networks”. Short for “community” networks or “The Com”, these online groups, whose members are predominantly teenagers and young adults, collaborate, compete, and gain status by inflicting or recording extreme harm.
Law enforcement agencies across the UK, US and Europe have already raised the alarm about these chat groups where violence-obsessed young people incite each other to commit ever-more extreme acts, ranging from vandalism to animal torture, sexual abuse and murder.
The analysis, shared exclusively with The i Paper, was carried out by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), an organisation that monitors extremism, with a branch based in London.
The research has revealed “multiple indicators suggesting possible Russian state-linked support” for a section of the “Com network” movement, using tactics that “mirror established Russian methods for recruiting ‘disposable agents’ for violence abroad”.
At least two incidents have taken place in the UK in connection with one of the Russia-linked groups, which The i Paper is not naming to avoid signposting its online presence.
Both were acts of vandalism filmed by a person who declared their allegiance by holding up a piece of paper displaying the name of the organisation, its leaders and allies.
In one video shared on the group’s official channel on the Telegram app, a person wearing black gloves used a brick to smash a car’s front and rear windscreens before jumping onto the bonnet and stamping on the vehicle.
The i Paper has established that the incident took place in Bedford on 14 April, and targeted a car used by carers working with elderly people to visit their clients. They were not aware the video had been recorded.
“We were very upset by the incident and had no idea why our car had been targeted,” said the owner of the company, who did not want to be identified. “The police were contacted at the time, but no action was taken.”
Bedfordshire Police said: “Initial enquiries carried out identified no evidential lines of enquiry and the report was filed pending further information coming to light.”
After speaking with The i Paper, the victim contacted the force again and shared the video with officers. “This will be treated as new evidence,” the police said.
A second video posted to the same Telegram channel in May appeared to show the same person throwing a brick through a house window, but the location and date of the incident could not be confirmed.
The group that posted the videos, and whose name was written on the piece of paper displayed in the footage, has been identified by the Security Service of Ukraine as a Russian intelligence operation.
A week after the car vandalism incident in Bedford, Ukrainian police arrested two boys aged 11 and 15 who they said had planned to attack their schools with explosives and guns “on the orders of the Russian Federation”.
The Security Service of Ukraine said the two suspects had been using a Telegram channel “through which Russian special services are systematically trying to select and recruit underage citizens”.
The channel had offered to “sponsor” people to plan school shootings by buying weapons including guns and knives, as well as body armour and balaclavas, and helping people plan their attacks and make explosives.
The organisation is one of eight in a new umbrella group that launched itself on the Telegram app in April, vowing to draw together groups with “different religions, different views, different actions [but] one goal”.
Writing in Russian and English, it claimed: “We help each other because we are all interested in only one result – chaos.”
Earlier this month, the umbrella group posted on its Telegram channel: “It’s important to remember that the coalition has contracts in various countries around the world that can be quite lucrative – for those who are willing to take risks.”
One of its constituent organisations previously declared an alliance with “Direct Action” – a fake British far-right group which offered payments for anti-migrant vandalism and sabotage, and was linked to the fires targeting Keir Starmer’s properties last year.
Steven Rai, who conducted the ISD research, said the offer of payment was “completely new” within Com networks and that photos claiming to show cryptocurrency transfers for arson attacks had been posted on Telegram.
“It begs the question of a) where’s the money coming from, and b) what are the people providing this money getting out of it?” he asked, saying one group had offered $3,000 (£2,224) for vehicle arsons.
In addition to its direct military operations against Ukraine, Russia appears to have stepped up its sabotage campaign elsewhere in Europe this summer.
Here are a few of the reported incidents in several European countries that have been blamed on Moscow or are still being investigated for possible links to Russia:
Multiple drones were discovered at and near an airport in Leipzig, Germany, in early August. An explosive device carried by one of the drones found on 4 August failed to explode, reportedly due to a faulty detonator, but Germany’s interior ministry has since said the incident followed the “well-established pattern of Russian hybrid operations in Europe”.
This month, meanwhile, two Bulgarians were arrested in Munich for suspected arson after throwing incendiary devices at defence firm Rhode & Schwartz, while police also said they are searching for a climate extremist suspected of sabotage attacks on power substations in western Germany.
Starting about a week after the first drone was discovered at Leipzig’s airport, several suspicious fires broke out at various defence facilities across the continent.
It began on 10 August with a major fire at a warehouse in Tryavna, Bulgaria, belonging to defence firm EMCO. The company ruled out “human error” in a statement and referenced previous blasts at its facilities which were investigated for links to Russia.
Three days later, a large explosion was triggered by a fire at KNDS Ammo outside Rome, Italy, with the local prosecutor reportedly looking into possible outside influence.
Two days after that, a fire at Milrem Robotics’ factory – which reportedly supplies drones to Ukraine – in Tallinn, Estonia, led the country’s Prime Minister Kristen Michal to say investigators are “taking seriously” the prospect of Russian influence.
In Slovakia, police then averted an arson attack on a Ukrainian-owned drone manufacturer, seizing a “large amount of incendiary mixture”. The firm in question blamed Russia while local authorities said three suspects who were arrested were “following orders”.
And late last month, two fires were reported in Poland, one of which – involving a masked man caught on CCTV throwing incendiary devices at a facility belonging to drone producer WB Group – was labelled by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk as a “continuation of Russia’s escalatory activities”.
Teenagers in the networks were previously motivated by the pursuit of violence for its own sake, Mr Rai said, as well as a mixture of ideologies including neo-Nazism and Satanism, and “gaining clout” from their peers.
The umbrella group has also launched what it calls a “marketplace” where people are being invited to purchase guns and instruction material on making explosives, poisons and launching cyber attacks.
Its leaders – Russian-speaking men who have appeared in videos with their faces covered by masks – appear to be more “sophisticated” than the teenagers who previously led Com networks, Mr Rai said.
While they claim to be separate people from independent groups, several of the videos appear to have been filmed in the “exact same interior location”.
“This is a very new development we’re seeing, where we suspect a state actor is hijacking and exploiting the Com network because they’re a convenient pool of recruits to engage in acts of violence all over the world,” Mr Rai added.
“It’s very concerning because we’re talking about a group of largely kids, who are seeking notoriety and to engage in violence, but who may not have the means or the knowledge to do that effectively.
“They are now being steered in a direction where they could potentially be a lot more damaging than they already have been.”
The National Crime Agency said it was working with Counter Terrorism Policing in a “cross-departmental taskforce” to counter the threat from Com networks in Britain.
“We continue to see a collection of online groups that are distributing grotesque content while also encouraging and directing real-world violence,” a spokesperson said. “These groups, the people behind them, and the types of harms they inflict on society don’t fit neatly into boxes or fall under the scope of one individual organisation.”
