Russia’s Wagner Group has found new purpose in coordinating sabotage operations across Europe despite the August 2023 death of founder Yevgeny Prigozhin and a government crackdown following the mercenary organization’s failed rebellion against military leadership.
Recruiters and propagandists from Wagner’s network now work for Russia’s military intelligence agency, known as the GRU, to identify and direct what officials describe as “disposable” agents for attacks on NATO territory, according to Western intelligence officials.
The mercenary group launched a short-lived mutiny against Russian military commanders in June 2023. Prigozhin died two months later when his plane crashed in circumstances western officials suspect resulted from sabotage.
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Rather than dismantling Wagner entirely, Moscow repurposed the organization’s recruitment infrastructure for a different mission. Operatives who once persuaded young Russians to fight in Ukraine now recruit vulnerable Europeans through social media to attack targets supporting Kyiv.
“Russia’s military intelligence agency is using the talent it has got available to it,” a Western intelligence official told the Financial Times.
Moscow expanded its disruption campaign across Europe over the past two years as Western nations armed Ukraine. European capitals expelled dozens of Russian intelligence officers, forcing spy agencies to shift toward proxy operations using local recruits.
The GRU maintains at least two intermediary layers between itself and recruited agents to preserve deniability, European officials said. Wagner’s existing network of propagandists and recruiters proved particularly effective for this purpose because they understand how to engage potential recruits.
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Russia’s domestic intelligence agency, the FSB, has separately cultivated criminal and diaspora networks for recruitment, though these efforts have shown less success than Wagner’s operation, officials said.
British courts convicted Dylan Earl, 21, in 2025 and sentenced him to 23 years in prison for burning down an east London warehouse in March 2024. Prosecutors said Wagner operatives recruited Earl through social media in late 2023. He subsequently recruited four additional young men to help execute the attack on a facility storing Ukraine-bound equipment.
“The hidden hand of the internet delivered results because anonymous recruiter proxies operating through internet chat rooms, usually on encrypted platforms, found within the United Kingdom young men who were prepared to undergo a form of radicalization and betray their country for what seemed easy money,” Justice Cheema-Grubb said during sentencing.
The International Institute for Strategic Studies documented more than 50 sabotage events across Europe from 2022 through mid-2025. Researchers found the number of attacks targeting critical infrastructure nearly quadrupled since 2023.
Sabotage operations have included arson attacks on politicians’ vehicles and warehouses, GPS jamming, vandalism of critical infrastructure, and agents posing as extremist propagandists. Poland expelled Russian diplomats and closed Moscow’s Kraków consulate in May 2025 after linking Russian networks to incendiary attacks.
Wagner recruiters target economically vulnerable individuals who, officials say, are frequently seeking financial opportunity or stability. The group’s Telegram channels have proven effective at identifying and engaging potential recruits.
Prigozhin previously operated the Internet Research Agency, a St Petersburg disinformation network that targeted Western audiences for more than 10 years. That experience in online influence operations transferred to Wagner’s current recruitment efforts.
Officials say security services have disrupted more plots than have been carried out successfully. Russia’s spy agencies sacrifice competence and operational security by using amateur saboteurs, security authorities noted.
NATO’s Deputy Assistant Secretary-General described sabotage threats in January 2025 as reaching a ‘record high’, though researchers noted a decline in attacks during the first half of 2025 without determining the cause.
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