A Kyiv court has sentenced an unemployed man to 15 years in prison with confiscation of his property for carrying out arson attacks on behalf of Russian intelligence, Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) said on 13 August. The man was recruited while looking for "easy money" on Telegram channels and carried out two arson attacks in Kyiv before fleeing to Odesa, the SBU reported.

Russian intelligence increasingly recruits Ukrainians through Telegram for arson and sabotage. It targets people seeking quick money and treats them as disposable operatives, paying small sums for a single task and discarding them once they are caught.

The Russian agent carried out two arson attacks

According to the SBU, the man first set fire to a relay cabinet belonging to a railway signaling system. Russia intended the attack to disrupt freight logistics, including supplies to areas near the front.

The agent later burned a volunteer’s SUV used to deliver humanitarian aid and evacuate civilians from areas affected by Russia’s war. He carried out the attacks at night, using a flammable mixture and filming each incident on his smartphone before sending the footage to his Russian handler.

The SBU arrested him in Odesa in July 2025, where he had attempted to hide after carrying out the attacks. Investigators seized his phone, which contained evidence of his cooperation with Russia.

A court found him guilty on two counts — sabotage committed under martial law, and intentional destruction of property by arson — both carried out as part of a group acting on prior conspiracy. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison with confiscation of his property.

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Easy money, hard time: other Telegram recruits jailed too

The case follows several similar convictions. In a May case, an agent received 15 years for burning a railway relay cabinet near a Dnipro station in an attempt to disrupt frontline logistics. The SBU said the unemployed local, recruited through Telegram, filmed the arson and reported it to his handler, then was caught before he could carry out a planned series of attacks on the city's critical infrastructure.

In June 2026, another agent was sentenced to 15 years for preparing to burn an electrical substation in Kropyvnytskyi.

In July, SBU investigators reported that a GRU agent in Zaporizhzhia received 15 years for preparing explosives for Russian-organized attacks.

On 13 August, the Ukrainian-Crimean Tatar partisan movement ATESH said its agents had disabled a communications tower near Pylna in northern Kharkiv Oblast. The group said the damage disrupted links between two Russian motor rifle regiments near the border.

Pylna lies on the Russian border and was among the villages seized when Moscow opened the northern Kharkiv front in May 2024. The claimed tower attack is part of a wider Ukrainian resistance effort behind Russian lines. Moscow's forces still depend on infrastructure in occupied territory to communicate, move supplies, and hold the line. Ukraine’s underground fighters exploit that dependence from within, targeting communications, transport, and fuel supplies to create problems for Russian units at the front.

ATESH said the tower carried data between Russian command posts and coordinated units in the area. The movement said its loss disrupted command channels and delayed border-zone mobile groups. It did not say how agents disabled the tower or how long the interruption would last.

The partisans stated that the communications between Russia’s 345th and 380th motor rifle regiments were hit hardest. The regiments operate in neighboring sectors and rely on stable links for joint action and rapid responses, according to the group. ATESH claimed their offensive tempo and ability to support each other had fallen.

Neither the claimed ATESH sabotage nor its reported effects have been independently verified.

ATESH attacks on Russian supply lines

The tower claim follows ATESH’s 10 August account of sabotaging an electric locomotive near Voronezh. The group said it carried military supplies toward the Kupiansk front in Kharkiv Oblast. In June, ATESH also said agents damaged power and rail equipment near Russia’s Novomoskovsk Azot plant, whose output feeds explosives production.

ATESH has also reported intelligence work inside Russian forces. In July, the group said an agent reported a Ukrainian strike on five military fuel trucks in occupied Luhansk. Together, the claims describe a campaign against transport, fuel, and communications behind the front.

Ukrainian resistance works behind the front

The claimed tower operation is one part of the Ukrainian resistance behind Russian lines. Underground networks also gather intelligence and sustain civil defiance. 

A Euromaidan Press investigation documented groups planting explosives, tracking Russian positions, distributing leaflets, and painting Ukrainian symbols despite the threat of imprisonment and torture.

ATESH says its network includes Ukrainians, Crimean Tatars, anti-war Russians, and sources inside Russia’s military and occupation administrations. Its claims are often impossible to verify independently. Taken together, they portray a campaign to make Russia’s rear less secure while other groups preserve Ukrainian identity under occupation.

Russia may expand hybrid attacks against Poland and the Baltic states, including infrastructure sabotage or false-flag attacks, Bloomberg reported on 12 August, citing an unnamed European intelligence official. 

The warnings come amid concern that Moscow wants to intimidate Ukraine’s supporters. The CIA warning follows Russian threats, incursions, alleged sabotage plots, and disinformation against Poland and the Baltic states. Most Western military aid reaches Ukraine through Poland, while the Baltic states rank among Kyiv’s strongest supporters. Sabotage of transport, energy, or communications can slow aid delivery and test NATO while hiding Russia’s role.

Separately, a European government official told Bloomberg that the CIA had warned countries in the region of a possible future Russian attack. The CIA declined to comment.

The same official said Russia might instead be creating the impression of an impending attack to sow fear as part of an information operation. The official saw no signs that Moscow was preparing a conventional attack or invasion.

Moscow tests NATO’s eastern flank

Poland and Lithuania had already raised similar concerns. In July, Poland said it had credible intelligence that Russia was planning new provocations. Lithuania later warned that Moscow might rebuild captured Ukrainian drones for false-flag strikes on critical infrastructure.

In September 2025, between 19 and 23 Russian drones entered Polish airspace, shutting down airports and damaging buildings. Poland closed four airports as NATO aircraft responded.

Meanwhile, five people are on trial in Lithuania over attacks allegedly organized for Russian military intelligence in 2024, Bloomberg reported. Lithuania has reinforced infrastructure sites and deployed troops since June.

These warnings and incidents place the CIA alert within a wider pattern of pressure on NATO’s eastern flank and Ukraine’s supporters. 

How Russia strikes without starting a war

Bloomberg cited several recent unexplained drone incidents in Germany alongside the CIA warning. Citing Die Zeit, Euromaidan Press reported that an explosive-laden drone struck the wing of a parked Ukrainian An-124 at Leipzig-Halle airport and failed to detonate. A US Defense Department official in Europe told CNN that Washington assessed the drone belonged to Russian intelligence. 

Bloomberg also reported that a cargo plane hit an unidentified object and that drones appeared over a military base the following day. It did not connect either incident to Russia.

More broadly, Russian hybrid operations have grown sharply since the full-scale invasion. CSIS found that attacks in Europe tripled from 2023 to 2024, after quadrupling the previous year. Separately, the US Helsinki Commission mapped nearly 150 operations in NATO territory attributed to or suspected of Russia between February 2022 and November 2024.

Retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges told Euromaidan Press in February that attacks on ports, railways, and cables can probe routes needed for NATO reinforcements. Their deniability raises the political cost of responding.

By hiding its role, Moscow can disrupt support for Ukraine and test NATO without openly starting a war. 

Newly analyzed airport camera footage shows a quadcopter drone loaded with Semtex explosive flew straight at a parked Ukrainian An-124 Ruslan cargo aircraft and struck its wing at Leipzig/Halle airport in Germany on the evening of 4 August, the media outlet Die Zeit reported on 10 August. The device bounced off the wing, fell to the ground, and failed to detonate. The drone attacked the aircraft at around 19:30 local time, the media outlet reports.

Russia's hybrid attacks are increasingly moving from the information domain into the physical one, including on the territory of other countries. This incident makes sabotage on NATO member states' territory potentially more dangerous if suspicion of Russian involvement is confirmed.

Footage contradicts the warning-shot theory

The drone struck the wing near the fuel tanks, then bounced off the aircraft's surface and fell to the ground. The explosive device also ended up on the ground and did not detonate. The device contained Semtex plastic explosive. Approximately four hours later, a tourist bus driver accidentally noticed it lying on the ground, put his foot on it, and reported the find to airport security.

Video analysis contradicts the earlier theory that the incident may have been intended only as a warning. The nature of the attack indicates an attempt to cause actual damage.

Investigators examining foreign state involvement

German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt suggested that a state actor may have been behind the explosive-laden drone found at the airport. On 7 August, Germany's National Security Council convened under Chancellor Friedrich Merz. Earlier, the United States assessed that the drone discovered at Leipzig/Halle Airport in Germany overnight into 5 August belonged to Russian intelligence, a US Department of Defense official in Europe told CNN.

The cargo aboard the Ukrainian aircraft targeted in the sabotage attempt consisted of military equipment and ammunition that had arrived in Germany from France and was being prepared for further transportation, Süddeutsche Zeitung stated, citing a confidential German police report. However, Germany's Federal Ministry of the Interior denied this claim, according to dpa.

The An-124 Ruslan, struck by the drone, is operated by the Ukrainian company Antonov Airlines. After Russian forces destroyed its main base in Hostomel in 2022, the company has been using Leipzig/Halle airport as a temporary base for its aircraft.

Ukrainian partisans say they crippled a locomotive moving Russian military supplies to the front. Agents of the ATESH movement carried out a sabotage operation near Voronezh, destroying the cab of an electric locomotive used to support military transport, ATESH reported.

Disabling a single locomotive cripples the entire supply line. The locomotive was supposed to continue its journey toward the Kupiansk direction, and after the cab was damaged, operating the machine at its former pace became impossible, disrupting the schedule for forming and dispatching the next trains.

The target was a rail supply line to the front

ATESH said the sabotage hit a link in Russia's military logistics chain. The locomotive was part of the rail transport that moves Russian military cargo, and it was bound for the Kupiansk direction, one of the active sectors of the front in Kharkiv Oblast.

Russia depends heavily on railways to supply its forces. Its army moves ammunition, fuel, weapons, and heavy equipment to the front largely by rail, so the locomotives and the lines they run on are critical arteries of its war effort. A partisan network can reach them behind the front lines at a vulnerable point.

One damaged locomotive slows the whole chain

ATESH framed the value of the strike in terms of the cascade it sets off. The loss of even one link in the mainline causes delays in the delivery of ammunition, fuel, weapons, and heavy equipment.

Those delays compound at the front. When rear supply operations are interrupted, units lose combat effectiveness and suffer significant personnel losses, ATESH said, casting a single sabotaged locomotive as a blow that reaches the soldiers, depending on what it was carrying.

The strike fits ATESH's partisan campaign

Euromaidan Press cannot independently verify the Voronezh sabotage, which is ATESH's own account. But rail sabotage is a documented feature of the war behind Russian lines, and the movement's focus on the logistics that feed the front reflects a real vulnerability in an army that runs on rail.

German security services believe Russia was preparing to assassinate the head of a company that supplies drones to Ukraine, according to Die Zeit. Two suspected agents who surveilled him have been arrested, and officials warn the case marks a deadlier turn in Russian operations inside Germany.

Surveillance of a drone-maker

Investigators say the target is Stefan Thumann, head of the Bavarian startup Donaustahl, which makes reconnaissance and kamikaze drones for Ukraine. In December 2025, a recruit filmed his home and photographed the nameplate, focusing on the man rather than the company, security services believe. Thumann has been outspoken against Moscow, posting that "Russia doesn't want peace. It wants the destruction of the West."

Two arrests

A foreign intelligence service flagged Thumann as high-risk in December 2025. Bavarian police arrested Serhii N., a former bricklayer from Kharkiv with no intelligence training, then released him before analyzing his phones. The devices later showed contact with Russian intelligence and attempts to trail his father, investigators found. He fled to Spain, and a Romanian woman, Alla S., continued the surveillance. Both were arrested in March 2026, in Spain and North Rhine-Westphalia.

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Russia recruits such disposable agents online, paying people from precarious backgrounds for surveillance, arson, and sabotage, and discarding them afterward. Ukraine's own SBU security service has reported dozens of cases in 2026 of Russia recruiting Ukrainians at home for arson and sabotage, often by forging Ukrainian security summonses to pose as their own government.

The BfV, Germany's domestic intelligence service, classifies the case as a suspected planned assassination. A federal investigating judge was not convinced, so the arrest warrant cites only suspected intelligence-agent activity. Lawyers for both suspects declined to comment.

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A widening threat

A second German arms company is reportedly in Russian intelligence's sights, investigators say. On 11 June, Serbian officers stopped a truck of concealed explosives apparently bound for Bavaria, home to Donaustahl, Quantum Systems, and Helsing. 

The threat has precedent: agents had Rheinmetall chief Armin Papperger watched in 2024, and an FSB killing struck a Georgian exile in Berlin in 2019. It fits a broader Russian sabotage campaign across Europe. 

Thumann, now under guard, still taunts Moscow: 

"You won't break me."

Ukraine's counterintelligence of a spy agency has detained a young woman accused of helping Russia prepare an air strike meant to leave Poltava—a city in central Ukraine—without power, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said. Investigators say the student mapped the city's energy sites in Poltava and the surrounding area and filmed Ukrainian air-defense units for Russian handlers before any strike could land. She now sits in custody and faces life imprisonment with confiscation of property.

A student lured by "easy money"

The suspect is a student at a local university in Poltava Oblast, the SBU reported. She came to the attention of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) while hunting for easy money in Telegram channels, according to the agency. After recruiting her, her handlers set her to work in her own hometown.

Mapping the grid, filming the defenses

Under the guise of walks, she moved through the city and surrounding area to fix the locations of energy facilities that feed the oblast center and nearby districts. Those were the sites Russia was preparing to hit from the air. She also rode around Poltava Oblast by taxi, taking photos and video of Ukrainian air-defense units. Officers say they exposed her in advance and detained her before any strike. During a search, they seized smartphones and computer equipment holding evidence of her work for the enemy.

Investigators served her a suspicion notice under Part 2 of Article 111 of Ukraine's Criminal Code, which covers high treason committed under martial law. She is being held without the right to bail. She faces life imprisonment with confiscation of property.

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What came before

Russia keeps leaning on Ukrainians recruited online to scout for its strikes, and Ukraine's security service reports such arrests regularly. Days earlier, officers detained another suspect in Kharkiv Oblast, accused of planting hidden cameras to guide Russian attacks. The kind of energy sites she scouted have sat at the center of Russia's long campaign against Ukraine's power grid, which has forced blackouts through successive winters.

Latvia has hardened security at key energy and water sites after intelligence flagged a Russian threat, Reuters reported. Its prime minister has asked NATO for more troops and air defense, warned of election meddling, and rebuked the European governments still shielding Russian gas.

Guarding the dam and the gas

Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs told Reuters that the country had raised its guard. He named a hydroelectric station above the capital and a large underground gas store. Asked to be specific, he pointed to the Incukalns gas facility, the wider energy sector and its companies, and the dam.

Undersea cables in the Baltic have already been damaged in suspected sabotage around the New Year. Russia recently closed seven rail crossings on its NATO borders without explanation. The Kremlin has brushed the warnings aside, calling them "scare stories."

Kulbergs cast the danger as growing. With Russia stalled in Ukraine, he said, its leaders want "a quick win, so the potential hybrid threat is larger than before." He added: 

"Anything is possible."

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An election under threat

Latvia, a NATO and EU member that borders Russia, ranks among Kyiv's firmest backers and Moscow's sharpest critics. That standing places it among Moscow's likeliest targets before an October national election.

His government is bracing for possible Russian meddling in the vote. Moscow denies the election-interference charges that Western capitals level at it. It has separately accused Latvia of opening air corridors for Ukrainian drones, showing no evidence.

Kulbergs turned his fire on the EU governments blocking the bloc's 21st sanctions package, singling out Bulgaria. One holdout is enough to keep the whole package stalled. The measures would sanction 250 people and entities and tighten the screws on Russian LNG.

Vetoing parts of it, he argued, carries a share of the blame for dead Ukrainian soldiers and civilians. Failing to move on Moscow's shadow fleet and its LNG sales, he said, keeps feeding the "Russian war machine."

Three men were found guilty on July 8 in connection with an arson attack on Ukraine-linked businesses in London, which British authorities say was orchestrated by Russia's Wagner mercenary group, Reuters reported.

The alleged ringleader, Dylan Earl, 21, had already pleaded guilty to aggravated arson over the 2024 blaze targeting companies that were supplying Elon Musk's Starlink satellite equipment to Ukraine, according to Reuters.

The systems are considered vital to Ukraine's communications and defense against Russia's ongoing invasion.

Earl also became the first person convicted under the U.K.'s National Security Act after admitting to a separate plot to attack a wine shop and restaurant in London’s upscale Mayfair district and to kidnap its owner, a prominent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Two others, Jake Reeves, 23, and Earl’s associate, also pleaded guilty to aggravated arson, with Reeves admitting to a charge under the National Security Act for receiving a material benefit from a foreign intelligence agency.

A jury at London's Old Bailey court convicted three additional men, Nii Kojo Mensah, 23, Jakeem Rose, 23, and Ugnius Asmena, 20, of aggravated arson. They had denied the charges. A fourth man, Paul English, 61, was acquitted.

Two other defendants, Ashton Evans, 20, and Dmitrijus Paulauskas, 23, were charged with failing to disclose knowledge of terrorist activity. Evans was convicted on one count and cleared of another. Paulauskas was acquitted of both charges and reportedly broke down in tears as the verdict was read.

Commander Dominic Murphy of the London Metropolitan Police reportedly said he was confident the Wagner Group and the Russian state were behind the attacks.

The U.K. has designated the Wagner Group as a terrorist organization.

Earl had exchanged hundreds of encrypted messages with a supposed Wagner handler using the alias "Privet Bot" on Telegram. According to reporting by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), the account was previously advertised by Grey Zone, a Wagner-affiliated channel.

Prosecutors said Earl expressed interest in fighting for Wagner and was encouraged to recruit contacts from British soccer hooligan networks, Irish republican groups, and organized crime circles, Reuters reported. He and Evans also admitted to unrelated charges of dealing cocaine.

The Russian Embassy in London has denied any involvement in the warehouse attack and accused the British government of blaming Russia for domestic issues.

The Kremlin has consistently rejected accusations of sabotage and espionage, despite growing evidence and convictions tied to Russian-linked operations across Europe.

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The Kyiv IndependentLiliane Bivings

BRICS summit participants condemned recent attacks on Russia’s railway infrastructure, according to a joint declaration on July 6 from Rio de Janeiro.

"We condemn in the strongest possible terms the attacks on bridges and railway infrastructure deliberately targeting civilians in the Bryansk, Kursk and Voronezh regions of the Russian Federation on May 31, and June 1 and 5 2025, which resulted in the deaths of several civilians, including children," the document says.

Bryansk, Kursk, and Voronezh oblasts are all located near Ukraine’s northeastern border and have played a central role in Russia’s war effort, serving as key logistical hubs and launch sites for missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian cities–often targeting civilian infrastructure and causing casualties.

In their declaration, BRICS leaders also called for a negotiated peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine.

“We recall our national positions concerning the conflict in Ukraine as expressed in the appropriate forum, including the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly,” the document said. “We expect that current efforts will lead to a sustainable peace settlement.”

The statement comes a few days after a phone call between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 3, in which Putin said "Russia will continue to pursue its goals" in the war against Ukraine, Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov attended the summit in person, while Russian President Vladimir Putin participated via video link.

Brazil is a member of the ICC and a signatory to the Rome Statute, meaning it is obliged to arrest Putin if he enters the country.

The ICC issued a warrant for the Russian leader's arrest in March 2023 over the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children during Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The BRICS declaration also condemned recent U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities as violations of international law and criticized the presence of foreign forces in Syria and Gaza, calling for Israeli withdrawal from Syrian territory.

BRICS, originally composed of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, has expanded in recent years to include Iran, Egypt, the UAE, Ethiopia, and Indonesia.

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The Atesh partisan group set fire to a signal cabinet that helps control traffic on a railway line near the Russian-occupied city of Yasynuvata in Donetsk Oblast, a route used for Russia's military logistics, the group claimed on Telegram on June 28.

Yasynuvata lies some 22 kilometers (12.5 miles) from the occupied city of Donetsk and is considered to be a major railway junction in the region.

According to the group, the sabotaged section is located near Russian military units, warehouses, and industrial facilities.

Atesh said the attack disrupted the delivery of a train carrying fuel for Russian forces.

"On Ukraine's Constitution Day, we remind the occupiers that this is an independent and free country. And Donetsk will always be Ukrainian," the statement read.

The Kyiv Independent could not verify these claims.

The Atesh partisan group regularly conducts sabotage attacks in Russia and Ukraine's Russian-occupied territories.

In early June, Atesh claimed to have destroyed a signal cabinet on the new Volnovakha-Mariupol railway, which had been recently built by occupying Russian forces.

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The Kyiv IndependentThe Kyiv Independent news desk

Ukraine's security service (SBU) is teaching teenagers how to avoid recruitment by Russian intelligence online, the New York Times (NYT) reported on June 21.

"Maybe not all of these special operations are reported in the media — but believe me, the enemy is not sleeping... They are working actively and carrying out illegal activities, as strange as it may sound, directly inside your phones," SBU spokesperson Roksolana Yavorska-Isaienko told students.

Approximately 22% of Ukrainians recruited by Russian intelligence to conduct sabotage or terrorist attacks are minors, Artem Dekhtiarenko, SBU spokesperson, said on April 2.

Russian intelligence attempts to recruit Ukrainian civilians online, offering easy money in return for sharing sensitive data or preparing sabotage or terrorist acts.

Russian intelligence finds its recruits using social platforms, including Telegram, Discord, and TikTok.

Unsuspecting teenagers are often offered hundreds or even thousands of dollars to conduct simpler tasks such as delivering packages or taking photos of energy sites, the NYT reports.

More serious tasks are commonly assigned to teenagers once they have been blackmailed for conducting less serious operations beforehand or when their phones are hacked to reveal compromising photos.

Russian intelligence is actively attempting to recruit Ukrainian nationals for illegal operations across the EU, Ukraine's military intelligence agency (HUR) said on June 2.

"The recruitment of Ukrainians for hostile operations in Europe is yet another tool of hybrid aggression that the Russian Federation is waging against Ukraine and the entire European community," HUR said.

The SBU caught a Russian agent as he was filming a military airfield in preparation for a Russian strike, the agency reported on June 15.

The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) recruited the unemployed 24-year-old via the Telegram messaging app to collect coordinates for air attacks on airfields and logistic depots, the SBU said.

The Russian FSB allegedly offered "easy money" and instructed the recruit to find military facilities and carry out reconnaissance on the ground.

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The Kyiv IndependentKate Tsurkan

Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR) ignited an electrical substation during a sabotage operation in the Russian city of Kaliningrad, causing $5 million in damage and cutting electricity to a military production site, a source in HUR told the Kyiv Independent.

In the early hours of June 14, Ukrainian agents drained the coolant from the substation’s power transformer before setting the facility on fire. The inferno inflicted major damage on the facility and caused a power cut, impacting nearby Russian military sites.

"We once again remind you that Russia no longer has a rear either in the east, in the west, or anywhere else on the planet. Everything Russian involved in the war against Ukraine will burn, sink, and be destroyed regardless of its level of protection or location," the source said.

Ukraine continues to carry out numerous secretive attacks within Russia and occupied Ukrainian territories, targeting military sites, like airfields, as well as key infrastructure like railways and oil refineries.

The attacks involve HUR, Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) as well as partisan and sabotage groups.

HUR was behind explosions near Desantnaya Bay in Russia's far eastern Vladivostok on May 30, which reportedly damaged military personnel and equipment. The operations took place approximately 6,800 kilometres from the Ukrainian border, making it Ukraine's furthest incursion into Russian territory, if confirmed.

On June 1, the SBU launched Operation Spiderweb, a game-changing drone attack on four key Russian military airfields, damaging 41 planes, including heavy bombers and rare A-50 spy planes.

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