The New Yorker:

How Russian military intelligence is recruiting young people online to carry out espionage, arson, and other attacks across Europe.

By Joshua Yaffa

In April, 2024, a Ukrainian woman in her late thirties, whom I’ll refer to as Anna, received an unexpected call from an old acquaintance, a man named Daniil Gromov. They had known each other in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, near the border with Russia. Two years earlier, after Russia invaded Ukraine, Anna had fled with her family to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. Now Gromov said that he needed a favor: a friend was looking for someone in Vilnius to pick up a package for him. Could Anna help? She agreed and, soon afterward, got a call on the messaging service Telegram. A user named Warrior2Alpha told her that the package was stored in a luggage locker at the train station. He sent her a screenshot of a receipt with a code for opening the door.

Inside the locker, Anna found an assortment of items bundled in a blue ikea shopping bag, which she took home and stored in a closet. Three days later, Warrior2Alpha sent her a voice message with a new request. He wanted photographs of the bag’s contents. Anna opened the bag and pulled out a remote-controlled car still in its box. A bubble-wrap bag containing a bundle of wires was taped to one side of it. She also found several cellphones, charging cables, and a pair of black vibrators. Anna snapped a photograph and sent it to Warrior, as she came to call him, who instructed her to return the ikea bag to another locker at the train station.

By then, Anna was feeling increasingly uneasy about what she’d got herself into. Warrior’s profile on Telegram included images of a pistol and ammo cartridges, something that looked like a missile, and a Russian flag. Anna worried that, by helping him, she was somehow aiding the Russian war effort. She contacted her sister, who had a friend who worked in law enforcement back in Ukraine. He advised Anna to delete the picture that she’d sent to Warrior and promised to alert the appropriate authorities in Lithuania.

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