Dylan Earl said he needed a “fresh start” in life. Unsatisfied by his prospects in his dreary English town, he decided to orchestrate a terrorist attack in London on behalf of a Russian mercenary group.

If he’d had things his way, the 20-year-old, small-time drug dealer would have moved to Russia to join its military. He’d heard that he could make good money fighting for what he saw as a just cause but feared his lack of spoken Russian would hold him back.

As it happened, Earl was able to join the war from the comfort of his home in England’s Midlands. All it took was a simple “Hi” to an anonymous Telegram account called “Privet Bot” that was inviting Europeans to join the “resistance” against Ukraine’s allies.

Just five days later, Earl arranged for a group of men to set fire to a warehouse in east London, choosing the target because of its links to Ukraine. The next month, Earl was arrested and charged with aggravated arson and an offense under the UK’s new National Security Act, to which he pleaded guilty. A second suspect, Jake Reeves, would plead guilty to aggravated arson and another National Security Act charge.

More than a year on, six others stood trial between May and July at London’s Old Bailey in relation to the attack.

On Tuesday, three were convicted by the jury of aggravated arson, while a fourth – the man who prosecutors said drove them to the site – was acquitted of that charge, which he denied.

Of the two men accused of failing to inform the police of a potential terror attack, one was acquitted on two counts and the other found guilty on one count and cleared of a second.

British prosecutors said the “Privet Bot” account was associated with Wagner, a Russian mercenary group that has fought in Ukraine and maintained Moscow’s footprint in Africa. The account is now defunct, but correspondence revealed in the trial showed the length to which operatives went to recruit foot soldiers in the “shadow war” against the West.

Russia has not relied on well-trained agents in this campaign, but a network of low-level criminals: some sympathetic to Moscow’s cause, others simply wanting cash. Whereas espionage and sabotage used to take years to recruit and plan for, these operations now require just a few hours on Telegram and some cash. Analysts say this tactic is a dark spin on the modern “gig” economy: Hostile states use a young workforce that is temporary and flexible. The work is on-demand, just-in-time, no-strings-attached.

This has created headaches for those tasked with keeping Europe safe. Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence service, warned last year that Russia is on a “mission to generate mayhem on British and European streets.” Richard Moore, then head of MI6, the foreign intelligence agency, put it more bluntly: “Russian intelligence services have gone a bit feral.”

Some messages were deleted by the suspects, and investigators could not establish the identity of all the anonymous accounts involved. Where reproduced, some exchanges have been edited for clarity and length.

The crime

Earl made money dealing cocaine, with about £20,000 ($27,000) in cash and more in cryptocurrency to show for his exploits. But he wanted to make it big, and that meant getting out of England. One place in particular caught his eye.

It is not clear when Earl first became interested in Russia. On June 23, 2023, he joined a Telegram group called “AP Wagner Chat.” That same night, Yevgeny Prigozhin – then the head of Wagner – declared what would prove to be a short-lived mutiny against Russian President Vladimir Putin. Prigozhin died in a plane crash two months later.

Earl joined both smaller pro-Russian Telegram chats and larger groups such as “Grey Zone,” which boasted some 500,000 subscribers, and, according to British investigators, functioned as Wagner’s de facto mouthpiece. At least eight times between 2023 and 2024, the trial jury heard, the account promoted “Privet Bot,” encouraging people to join operations across Europe.

The account soon gave Earl his first target: a warehouse in Leyton, east London. The site was run by a Ukrainian man, whose businesses included delivering Starlink internet terminals to Ukraine – crucial technology for Kyiv’s war effort.

In case Earl was not sure what kind of work he was getting into, “Privet Bot” told him to watch the series “The Americans” – a Cold War drama in which Russian spies, embedded in Washington, DC, conduct dangerous missions for the Soviet Union.

The new world

Earl may have imagined himself as a Cold War-era spy, but much of that world has faded.

Landsbergis said it was like drones replacing legacy equipment on the battlefields of Ukraine. “They’re just cheaper, and as efficient to (achieve) your stated goals.”

Russia’s shift to this tactic may initially have been out of necessity. With hundreds of its diplomats and agents expelled from European countries in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Moscow had to get creative in how it conducted its operations.

But the tactic proved fruitful: Attacks like that in Leyton are cheap to set up, often deniable, and below the threshold likely to trigger a response under NATO’s Article 5.

The foot soldiers

Earl was committed to the mission; he just needed recruits. He found one in Reeves, a 23-year-old from Croydon, south London. It is not clear how Earl and Reeves first came into contact.

By day, Reeves worked as a cleaner at London’s Gatwick Airport. But in his ketamine-fueled nights, he became increasingly fascinated with his contact, Earl, whom he believed to be a Russian national, or at least a Russian speaker, with ties to the Kremlin.

While lacking Earl’s ideological fervor, Reeves could still help his cause by finding him willing foot soldiers. Prosecutors alleged he recruited Nii Mensah, now 23, another Croydon local who said he was “down for da cause,” as well as a large payday. Mensah appears to have recruited Jakeem Rose, also now 23, who lived near Mensah. Now they just needed a driver.

The night

Paul English took a laxative on the evening of March 20, 2024, to prepare for his bowel cancer screening the next morning. Planning for a quiet night, the 61-year-old would instead find himself driving “cross-legged” across London.

His neighbor’s son, Ugnius Asmena, needed a favor. He and his mates needed a lift around the city. Might English be able to help out?

As English recalled in his police interview, Asmena’s offer was simple: £500 for a night’s work – half up front, the rest later. All he had to do was take him to Croydon, pick up a couple of others, then head north across the River Thames. English agreed, because he was “skint,” or broke. Soon after, he was driving towards Leyton with Asmena in the front, and two others – Mensah and Rose – in the back, prosecutors said.

English said he did as he was told: He drove to Leyton, filling a jerry can with gasoline en route, and waited in the car with Asmena, while Mensah and Rose got out to “do their thing.” Minutes later, the pair jumped over the fence and back into the car, leaving English to make their getaway.

Just before midnight, the London Fire Brigade was called to the Cromwell Industrial Estate. The blaze caused more than £1 million in damage, the court heard.

Later that night, Mensah Googled “Leyton fire.”

“Bro lol,” he said to Earl on Telegram. “It’s on the news.”

When the jury returned Tuesday after several days of deliberation, Asmena, Rose and Mensah were each found guilty of aggravated arson, charges they had denied. English was acquitted of the same charge, which he had also denied.

The motive

Burning a warehouse will not on its own tip the balance of the war in Russia’s favor. But cumulatively, such attacks can unsettle Ukraine’s Western backers.

According to a database of alleged Russian “shadow” attacks compiled by the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think-tank, the number carried out quadrupled between 2022 and 2023, then nearly tripled between 2023 and 2024.

These alleged attacks have included blazes at a shopping mall in Poland and an Ikea store in Lithuania, cyberattacks on Czech railways, and the vandalism of Jewish buildings in France. Russia has denied allegations of any involvement.

Recalling his time in office in Lithuania, Landsbergis said responding to such attacks felt like playing whack-a-mole: “You catch one and Russia easily replaces them with several others hired through Telegram.”

Galeotti, the Russia analyst, said this alleged campaign has two main goals: To show Europe that there are costs to backing Ukraine, and – even if the operations fail – to cultivate a “general sense of chaos” in Europe.

“Everything that goes wrong, someone sees the ‘dread hand’ of Putin behind it,” Galeotti said. “If nothing else, it makes the Russians seem much more powerful that they really are.”

The fallout

Back in Croydon, Mensah wanted payment. But there was a holdup: Earl said he wouldn’t be paid until the Russians could judge the extent of the damage.

But “Privet Bot” wasn’t happy. It told Earl that he had jumped the gun. “We could have burned the warehouses much better and more if we had coordinated our actions,” it told him. As such, Earl wouldn’t receive the full fee.

Earl’s accomplices grew bitter – none more so than Mensah. Earl couldn’t stump up the cash for the first job, but felt he had something better: an even more lucrative contract for another arson attack – this time in London’s swish Mayfair district.

The targets were a restaurant and wine shop owned by Yevgeny Chichvarkin, a Russian businessman who had criticized the war in Ukraine. Earl went back to his UK contacts.

Reeves was happy to help, messages showed. He couldn’t be “broke forever,” he told his school friend, Dmitrijus Paulauskas, a Russian-speaking Lithuanian who moved to Britain when he was young. Although Paulauskas was not involved in planning the attack, in his messages he said he was “gassed” (excited) that Russia had “integrated into the UK underworld.”

Paulaskas was cleared by the Old Bailey jury on two counts of failing to disclose information about terrorist acts. Another defendant, Ashton Evans, 20, faced the same charges and was found guilty on one count and acquitted on the second.

The end game

While preparing for the attack in central London, Earl began to have grander ambitions. “Privet Bot” was encouraging: “You are wise and clever despite being young! We have a lot of glorious jobs ahead.”

But to recruit more people, Earl needed faster payments from Russia. Most of Earl’s messages to the bot were not recovered in the investigation, but one late-night, Google-Translated outburst had not been deleted, showing Earl pleading with his superiors to equip him to become “the best spy you have ever seen.”

The next day, Earl was arrested by British police. He pleaded guilty to aggravated arson and to an offense under the National Security Act. Reeves was arrested nine days later, and pleaded guilty to similar charges. Sentencing for Reeves and Earl – and the four others convicted – will take place at a later date, the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service said.

The next phase

Historically, Moscow has gone to great lengths to reward and retrieve its spies. But these “gig economy” recruits can’t expect the same.

To Russia, they are disposable; to their home countries, they are traitors. In her summing up, the judge put it starkly: “Our parents and grandparents would have had a simple term for what Dylan Earl and Jake Reeves did: treason.”

Although sabotage is an old crime, Europe has struggled to combat the new ways of committing it. Landsbergis said Europe’s disjointed response meant Russia could act with impunity. Now, Europe should “go after the archer, not the arrows,” he said.

The tempo of Russia’s alleged attacks has, however, slowed in recent months, Galeotti noted, perhaps due to the success of European authorities in thwarting them and bringing the perpetrators to justice. Or, he said, Moscow may be taking stock of what it learned from 18 months of “entrepreneurial” thinking.

“I would love to think that it was just something they tried and then abandoned. But I have a feeling we’re going to see them return to it, having internalized the lessons of the first ‘test’ operations,” he said.

Israel’s defense minister said he told the military to advance plans for what he called a “humanitarian city” built on the ruins of Rafah in southern Gaza, according to reports in Israeli media.

In a briefing to reporters Monday, Israel Katz said the zone would initially house some 600,000 displaced Palestinians who have been forced to evacuate to the Al-Mawasi area along the coast of southern Gaza, multiple outlets who attended in the briefing reported. Palestinians who enter the zone will go through a screening to check that they are not members of Hamas.

They will not be allowed to leave, Katz said, according to Israeli media. Eventually, the defense minister said the entire population of Gaza – more than 2 million Palestinians – will be held in the zone. Katz then vowed that Israel would implement a plan, first floated by US President Donald Trump, to allow Palestinians to emigrate from Gaza to other countries.

Israeli politicians, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have eagerly supported the emigration plan, despite no country publicly expressing any willingness to take part. At a White House dinner with Trump Monday, Netanyahu said, “We’re working with the United States very closely about finding countries that will seek to realize what they always said, that they want to give the Palestinians a better future, and I think we’re getting close to finding several countries.”

Katz said the zone for displaced Palestinians will be run by international bodies, not the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Israeli media reported. The IDF would secure the zone from a distance, Katz said, in a plan that appears to imitate the aid distribution mechanism of the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). GHF operates the distribution sites, but the IDF surrounds them militarily.

It’s unclear what bodies would agree to participate in Katz’s plan, especially since most international organizations refuse to take part in GHF’s distribution sites due to serious concerns about impartiality and the safety of the Palestinian population. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed trying to approach the distribution sites since they began operating a month ago, according to health officials in Gaza and the United Nations.

A spokesman for Katz has not responded to repeated requests for comment.

Asked about the plan at a press conference on Tuesday evening, IDF spokesman Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said the military “will present several options to the political echelon.”

“Every option has its implications. We will act according to the directives of the political echelon,” Defrin added.

On Tuesday, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the UK opposes the new plan, just as it opposed GHF.

“I’m surprised at the statements that I’ve seen from Mr. Katz over the last 24 hours,” Lammy told a parliamentary committee. “They run contra to the proximity to a ceasefire that I thought we were heading towards.” Lammy added that he does not recognize the plan “as a serious context in which the people of Gaza can get the aid and support that they need at this time.”

In a statement Tuesday, Hamas said that Israel’s “persistent efforts to forcibly displace our people and impose ethnic cleansing have met with legendary resilience. Our people have stood firm in the face of killing, hunger, and bombardment, rejecting any future dictated from intelligence headquarters or political bargaining tables.”

“If they are done on a massive scale – whole communities – they can amount to war crimes,” Sfard said, dismissing the notion that any departure from Gaza could be considered voluntary.

“There is no consensual departure. There is no voluntary departure. People will flee from Gaza because Israel is mounting on them coercive measures that would make their life in Gaza impossible,” he said. “Under international law, you don’t have to load people on trucks at gunpoint in order to commit the crime of deportation.”

Qatar, which is now hosting proximity talks between Israel and Hamas, also rejected the deportation of Gaza’s population. “We have said very clearly we are against any forced relocation of Palestinians, or any relocation of Palestinians outside their land,” Majed Al Ansari, spokesman for the Qatari Foreign Ministry, said on Tuesday.

Thirteen women and two men who survived captivity by Hamas said they experienced or witnessed sexual violence while held hostage in Gaza, according to a new report by a group of Israeli researchers known as the Dinah Project.

The Dinah Project experts — all women — gathered first-hand testimonies from the 15 returned hostages, one survivor of an attempted rape during the October 7, 2023 terror attacks, 17 eye and ear witnesses and 27 first responders who attended the scenes of the attacks.

These testimonies, coupled with forensic reports and photographs and videos from the attacks, led them to conclude that Hamas used sexual violence in a widespread, systematic and “tactical” way as a “weapon of war.”

The report, published on Tuesday, describes some of the survivors’ experiences.

One female hostage was beaten and sexually assaulted at gunpoint while in captivity, according to the report. She said she was chained by an iron ankle chain for three weeks and was repeatedly asked about the timing of her menstrual cycle. The report details that many of the 15 former hostages were threatened with rape in the form of forced marriage. Almost all of them reported verbal sexual harassment and some physical sexual harassment, including unwanted touching of private parts, it said.

Israel has in the past accused international organizations, including the UN and its agencies, of ignoring widespread sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas and other militant groups during the October 7 attacks.

The Dinah Project is an Israeli group established following the attacks to seek justice for victims of sexual violence. Made up of legal and gender experts, it is led by legal scholar Ruth Halperin-Kaddari and Sharon Zagagi-Pinhas, who was the former chief military prosecutor of the Israel Defense Forces, and operates under the auspices of the Ruth and Emanuel Rackman Center for the Advancement of Women at Bar-Ilan University.

The first official acknowledgment by the UN of the use of sexual violence during the attacks came some five months after October 7. Then, following a mission to Israel, the UN’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict Pramila Patten published a report concluding there were reasonable grounds to believe conflict-related sexual violence occurred in multiple locations, and that there was clear and convincing evidence that hostages in Gaza were subjected to sexual assaults.

Hamas has denied in the past that militants committed sexual violence, saying in a statement in December that these were “unfounded lies and allegations.”

The scale of the atrocities committed on the day of the attacks meant that first responders and investigators were overwhelmed. According to Jewish customs, bodies must be buried as soon as possible after death, so the focus of the first responders, many of whom were Orthodox Jewish volunteers, was on recovering remains rather than investigation.

In many instances, authorities did not have a chance to collect sufficient forensic evidence because they were attending scenes while the attacks were still ongoing. This meant that there were often no detailed records or photographs of the crime scenes in the immediate aftermath. Many of the victims of sexual violence were murdered by their attackers, which meant there were almost no first-hand testimonies, according to the report.

As some of the hostages were released and more time passed, allowing victims to process their experiences, researchers were able to collect more comprehensive first-hand evidence.

The Dinah Project researchers called for the sexual violence perpetrated during the attacks to be recognized as crimes against humanity, and said the perpetrators must be held accountable and receive international condemnation.