On March 11, two Ukrainian teenagers were on their way to plant an improvised explosive device in Ivano-Frankivsk, western Ukraine, when Russian agents detonated the bomb remotely, killing one and hospitalizing the other. Ukrainian authorities say the teens were recruited by Moscow via Telegram, after being lured with promises of easy money.
Russian intelligence used similar techniques to trick a 15-year-old girl into a suicide attack on a police station in the northern city of Chernihiv. Her bomb, hidden in a thermos flask, was meant to be detonated remotely by Russian agents tracking her on GPS, but Ukrainian intelligence uncovered the plot and managed to replace it with a dummy device.
In another case, a woman in Mykolaiv was tricked into carrying a bomb into a group of Ukrainian soldiers on Valentine’s Day, where her handlers remotely detonated it. She and one other person died. Eight people were wounded.
Russia is also recruiting Ukrainians — often children — via Telegram and darknet forums to carry out arson attacks on military vehicles and enlistment offices in exchange for cryptocurrency. Around 90% of the attacks are connected to financial incentives, though none have received the promised payouts of between $600 and $1,000, according to Dmytro Shumeyko, Kyiv’s police chief.
The operations, coordinated by Russian intelligence agencies as part of its broader hybrid war on Ukraine and Western Europe, are falsely framed in Kremlin propaganda as acts of domestic resistance at a time when Kyiv is struggling to mobilize more manpower for the front. Ukrainian law enforcement’s investigations show most of the 450 arsonists detained in 2024 were motivated by financial gain rather than support for Moscow. More than a fifth of Russian recruits were children, the SBU intelligence agency said.
The security forces have now launched a Telegram chatbot, “Burn the FSB Agent,” which encourages citizens to report Russian recruitment attempts. Since mid-December, more than 1,300 reports have been received through the bot. The SBU says Russia has been making more attempts recently, but with less success.
There have been debates about banning Telegram, which was founded by two Russian brothers, but it remains central to daily life in Ukraine. The app plays a vital role in communicating air alerts and providing news, even though it has become a recruitment tool for Russian intelligence services.
Around 70% of Ukrainians rely on Telegram as a primary news source and turn to the app for real-time updates during air raids. Kyiv also uses it to share alerts and gather intelligence from Russian-occupied areas.
Ukraine has banned government, military, and critical infrastructure employees from installing Telegram on state-issued devices. Officials cited national security concerns when they announced the restriction in September and warned that Moscow uses the app for cyberattacks, phishing, and targeting missile strikes.
Recruiting civilians is not new, and similar techniques have been alleged by both sides (though the suicide bombings are limited to Russia). In 2023, Russia claimed Ukrainian operatives tricked elderly Russians into setting fire to military recruitment centers by posing as police or creditors and offering to recover stolen savings.
Volodymyr Dubovyk, a non-resident senior fellow at CEPA, said social media and messaging apps offer easier and more cost-effective ways to recruit, coordinate, and stay in touch with networks of agents than more traditional means. And the focus is widening as Russia increasingly uses such apps to wage its shadow war across Europe.
With many of its most experienced intelligence officers expelled since the start of the war, and tighter restrictions on its operatives entering Europe, Moscow has turned to low-level recruits found on social media. These “disposable agents” have been used to carry out sabotage and destabilization missions, including attacks on NATO infrastructure and equipment bound for Ukraine.
In the UK, for example, Russia-linked Telegram channels are reported to be offering cryptocurrency in exchange for anti-Muslim graffiti and attacks on mosques as part of efforts to destabilize British society.
“Historically, militaries have long enlisted ordinary people for espionage,” said Treston Wheat, chief geopolitical officer at risk consultancy Insight Forward, and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. “Consider the Revolutionary War’s Culper Ring or civilian spies during World War II.”
The integration of civilians into covert operations reflects a time-tested approach to leveraging local knowledge and networks in warfare, he said.
That said, the recruitment of credulous or vulnerable people for suicide attacks is new to Europe, even if it is familiar to Arab terrorist groups targeting Israel.
There is no easy answer given the prevalence of social media. Telegram has been identified as a particular problem, and there has been a push to move sensitive communications to encrypted applications such as Signal, but there is evidence that Russian cyber groups are increasingly targeting that app too.
The rest of Europe really needs to pay attention. As hybrid warfare broadens and civilian involvement expands, the methods now being tested in Ukraine will increasingly be used across the continent.
Western European teenagers may soon be the ones planting bombs. A bad peace deal in Ukraine would free many of Russia’s terrorism planners and operatives to export their campaign of sabotage and subversion even deeper into Europe.
David Kirichenko is a freelance journalist and an Associate Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society. He can be found on X/Twitter @DVKirichenko.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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