Disposable: The ordinary people doing Russia’s dirty work

Disposable: The ordinary people doing Russia’s dirty work The Kremlin is recruiting civilians to carry out sabotage across Europe. By LENNART PFAHLERand ARTUR WEIGANDTin Vilnius Illustration by Maksym Filipenko for POLITICO The life Vasilij Kovacs knew ended with a bang. It was late afternoon on March 1, 2025, when an armored vehicle smashed through the metal gate of the old farmhouse where he lived southeast of the Latvian capital, Riga. Masked men emerged with their guns drawn. They belonged to Latvia’s State Security Service, the country’s counterintelligence agency. The officers searched the property, seizing several mobile phones, SIM cards and documents, along with a pistol with its serial number filed off, a bayonet from an AK-47 and a cellphone jammer, according to a search report later filed by the authorities. They arrested Kovacs, a Ukrainian man in his 60s who has lived in Latvia for more than 30 years. In March, Kovacs was transferred to stand trial in Lithuania, where he is accused of planning terrorist attacks, alongside four alleged accomplices. Five others face trial in Warsaw. Lithuanian and Polish prosecutors accuse the ten men of planning and carrying out arson attacks involving cargo parcels across several European countries on behalf of Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU. Advertisement One of those incidents made headlines across Germany. In the early hours of July 20, 2024, a parcel caught fire at Leipzig Airport just before it was due to be loaded onto a DHL cargo plane. The flames engulfed an airfreight container. It was probably only because the aircraft was delayed that the fire did not break out on board. All ten men say they did not knowingly work for Russian intelligence and say they are innocent of the terrorism charges. According to investigative files from the Office of the Prosecutor General of Lithuania, Kovacs is an example of an increasingly common category of Russian intelligence asset — the kind Western intelligence agencies call “low-level agents,” or, more tellingly, disposable agents. The 63-year-old Ukrainian national is alleged to have been a small cog in a much larger machine. Investigators say he transported massage pillows modified to be able to conceal incendiary devices from Latvia to Lithuania. The aftermath of the parcel fire in Leipzig, as seen in the investigation files. | WELT With its own officers finding it harder to operate in Europe since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the GRU increasingly relies on intermediaries to recruit people through messaging services such as Telegram, according to investigative files from Lithuania’s State Security Department obtained by the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, of which POLITICO is a part of. Often motivated by money, these disposable agents carry out individual assignments: Take a photograph. Mail a parcel. Move something from A to B. Sometimes the tasks are far more dangerous. Recruits may know little about the wider operation. Anyone who gets caught can be replaced. Much has been written about these agents and the shadow war unfolding across Europe. But one perspective is usually missing: Who are these people? How did they become pawns in a new Cold War that is growing increasingly hot? Are they simply perpetrators — or are they victims, too? Advertisement For this article, we spoke to Kovacs several times, interviewed his daughter and examined thousands of pages of investigative records. Together, they reveal a sabotage network where meticulous intelligence planning goes hand in hand with human incompetence, and in which ordinary people are, well, disposable. The GRU, contacted through the Russian government’s Press Service, did not reply to a request for comment. The courier The entrance to the prison where Kovacs has been held on remand for more than a year sits beneath a rusting metal roof. A Lithuanian investigating judge has authorized us to interview him, but when we arrive in Sept