‘Don’t make me chase you’: Leaked texts reveal how Russian spies recruit, pressure and run their informants

A cache of messages and recordings offers rare insight into Moscow’s efforts to infiltrate opposition groups in Europe.

By EVA HARTOG

Illustration by Natália Delgado/ POLITICO

Just before New Year’s Eve 2024, as many Russians were calling family and friends with holiday wishes, a 21-year-old computer science student living in Moscow received a very different kind of greeting.

“Fate keeps steering you away, from criminal persecution, from the army. I hope everything works out for you,” the caller said. The well-wishes then took a darker turn: “Don’t forget your homeland. And share more information.”

The student — who we have agreed to call Ivan because of fears for his safety — felt intimidated, but not surprised.

Throughout the previous year he’d been harassed by the same man and his colleague, both Russian intelligence officers. It had begun 16 months earlier, after Ivan had been detained by them and offered a deal: Inform on his acquaintances in anti-Kremlin circles, many of whom had fled abroad, or go to prison.

The New Year’s call is part of a cache of text messages and recorded conversations between Ivan and his handlers that were shared with POLITICO.

At a time when the Kremlin is waging a widening campaign of sabotage and espionage across Europe, they offer rare documentary insight into how Russian intelligence agencies recruit, coerce and manage informants.

As this long-standing practice extends beyond Russia’s borders, it poses new challenges for European host countries and their intelligence agencies.

The conversations — which took place between the summers of 2023 and 2025 — reveal a “good cop, bad cop” routine to pressure Ivan to infiltrate the online communication of an opposition group and report on their activities in Europe from Moscow.

The men were hungry for seemingly trivial details, and their interest wasn’t limited to Russian citizens. They also wanted specifics about those — Russian or otherwise — helping emigrés in Europe, whether they be language teachers or foreign ministry officials in the countries where the dissidents had found new homes.

“Find out who is in Europe and in which country, and who is helping them, incl. specialist organizations,” reads one message.

When Ivan told one of the handlers about a rally in Berlin in November 2024 protesting Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the agent pushed for more: “I’m telling you, describe it, describe it, send me a report,” he wrote. “Don’t make me chase you.”

“We know everything already, but we’d like to know more,” another message reads.

Protesters demonstrate against Vladimir Putin and Russia’s war on Ukraine in front of the Russian Embassy in Berlin in November 2024. | Axel Schmidt/Getty Images

‘Disposable assets’

Since Moscow’s all-out attack on Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of Russians have left the country, among them some of the Kremlin’s most vocal critics.

In Europe they hoped to find safety. Instead they have become both the targets of, and desired assets for, the Russian security services.

While much attention has focused on “disposable agents” recruited online for acts of sabotage or vandalism, the conversations shared by Ivan point to a different tactic: the long-term cultivation of informants embedded within opposition circles themselves.

“We need to be prepared to live with this for a long time to come,” said Andrei Soldatov, a leading expert on Russian intelligence.

Last year, in the first known espionage case against a Russian political dissident in Europe since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Poland put Igor Rogov — an exiled opposition activist-turned-student — on trial in the southern city of Sosnowiec.

Authorities accused Rogov of being connected to a bomb plot and of spying on fellow Russian exiles as well as the Polish government officials and university staff, including language teachers, who were helping them settle into a new life.

According to the indictment, Rogov was recruited in Russia by the federal security service (FSB) several years before his departure, and continued his role as an informant in exile. Rogov’s lawyer declined to comment on the case but court documents seen by POLITICO say he admitted to working for the FSB.

For the Russian security services, building networks of informants inside exile circles has a dual purpose, Soldatov said.

As long as informants remain unexposed, they can provide Moscow with information on the whereabouts, personal lives and vulnerabilities of the Kremlin’s critics at a time when it has diminished access to them because of the expulsion of dozens of Russian spies. And if an informant gets caught, as in Rogov’s case, it fosters distrust — both within activist circles and between them and their host countries.

“Either way, it’s a win-win,” Soldatov said.

While Moscow publicly dismisses exiled opposition figures as marginal and irrelevant, the attention it pays to them betrays a deep insecurity. In addition to infiltration efforts, Russian authorities continue to open criminal proceedings against Kremlin critics, even in absentia, labeling them “extremists” or “terrorists.”

The logic of the security services, Soldatov explained, is that while today’s exiles may appear unimportant, so did Vladimir Lenin before the 1917 revolutions that brought down the then-czar and more than 300 years of Romanov rule.

A police car goes past the headquarters of the FSB in central Moscow in March 2023. | Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images

“From the FSB’s perspective, they can’t afford even a 1-percent chance that these people could one day undermine Russia’s political stability” or threaten Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hold on power, Soldatov said.

‘Don’t try to play me for a fool’

Ivan’s troubles started in the summer of 2023. He’d just walked out of the jet bridge after landing at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport — back from visiting his parents in a Russian city that’s а two-and-a-half-hour flight away — when he was approached by two men in civilian clothes and two uniformed police officers who confiscated his phone and his passport.

The two men in civilian clothes introduced themselves as investigators for especially important cases, an elite FSB department tasked with state crimes. They flashed their badges at him, too quickly to see, and walked him to the baggage carousel.

As they waited with Ivan for his bags, they began casually pressing him about his personal life, his student debts and his parents — “things that they could only have found out from monitoring my communication,” Ivan recalled. “They were looking for pressure points.”

Afterward, in a room used by airport police, the conversation took a more serious turn. The two men confronted him with an organizational chart with his name and photograph and those of several acquaintances, accusing him — accurately — of having belonged to the youth group Vesna.

Тhe pro-democracy group had initially made a name for itself with satirical, mediagenic protests. In 2017 they held a “funeral for Russia’s future” ahead of a presidential election that gave Putin yet another term. А year later they hung a banner from a bridge in St. Petersburg reading “This World Cup is filled with blood,” ahead of the finals of the football tournament that Russia was hosting.

Following Moscow’s full-scale assault on Ukraine, Vesna had grown into one of the country’s main opposition forces, helping coordinate and encourage anti-war and anti-Kremlin protests.

The two agents also showed Ivan another document that appeared to include highlighted excerpts from a Vesna chat on Telegram, which had been deleted after a Russian court labeled the organization “extremist” in December 2022.

The men gave Ivan a choice. He could either become their informant, or they would take him straight to jail, where he would face a 15-year prison sentence for participating in an “extremist” chat group.

After Ivan agreed to the first option, he was made to sign a nondisclosure document and then driven to Moscow’s city center in an unmarked car, where he was released at a metro station. “We’ll write you on Telegram,” one of the men said by way of a farewell.

Shortly after, Ivan received a first message proposing a meeting outside the building where he was studying, in what would be the first of several tête-à-têtes.

Mostly, however, the agents stayed in touch with him online, through messages and calls on Telegram.

Passengers check in at the counters in Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow in June 2024. | Tian Bing/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images

One agent, tall and slender, took on an almost brotherly role, giving Ivan family advice, offering to sort out “trouble” with his studies, and suggesting he could shield Ivan from being drafted into Russia’s armed forces and sent to fight in Ukraine.

“I’ve talked it through, no one’s going to take you into the army,” the agent wrote in late November 2024, seemingly seeking to soothe Ivan’s concerns that he’d be recruited into the army. Ivan’s case, he promised, was under his “personal control.”

The other agent, of stockier build, seemed to have been tasked with ensuring compliance through intimidation.

“We had high hopes that you’d help us with information, but based on our interaction, you don’t seem to share that desire,” he wrote menacingly on one occasion.

Once, after Ivan had repeatedly come up with excuses not to meet in person, the agent appeared to lose his patience: “I’m a decent person, don’t try to play me for a fool. No one’s rushing to be friends with you. We have a joint job to do!”

The invitation to have a beer, he continued, is “to motivate you,” and to show “we’re not animals and we need your help, which, so far, you haven’t provided.”

Now and then, the roles were reversed.

“Ivan, please fucking take care of finding and reestablishing contact with Vesna, got it?” the first agent said during one call.

“Yes, I’m trying, I understand, ok,” Ivan replied, audibly stressed, which only seemed to further irritate the agent.

“What are you nervous about? Am I pressuring you? Relax. Breathe. Everything will be alright. Ok?”

‘You’d better call me real quick’

The two agents made no secret of what they were after: information about the Kremlin’s critics, most of whom had fled abroad to avoid landing in prison as Moscow cracked down on dissent following its invasion.

It was Ivan’s job to use his old ties to infiltrate their new communication channels, and inform on activist networks and their plans to protest the Kremlin, no matter where they lived.

Anti-war placards and protest signs are seen on the ground during a rally marking the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in Warsaw in February 2026. | Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images

“They [the activists] are actively working and constantly recruiting,” the second agent wrote. “The point is to understand which specific activities are taking place in which countries.”

The men also coached Ivan on how to gain the trust of his former companions.

“Float the topic that Russia sucks, you’re thinking of emigrating,” another message read. “Ask how and where you can go. Such as where the guys have settled, where you can find work.”

What they didn’t know, however, was that Ivan had been playing a double game from the start.

In the weeks after he was detained, while waiting for the agents to get in touch with him, his mental health took a nosedive, he said. His social life stalled, and he began to flunk his classes as he brooded on his situation.

Collaborating meant betraying his friends and, as he saw it, his country. It would also likely not yield any real benefit. Once he was no longer of use, the agents would probably jail him anyway, he reasoned.

He decided to confide in one of the people he was meant to be spying on: Alexander Kashevarov, a Vesna activist living abroad.

Together, they came up with a ploy: The activist would feed Ivan either false or harmless information to pass on to his handlers, while Ivan secured the documents to escape Russia. (Kashevarov confirmed this account.)

In early 2025 he succeeded and, after a roundabout journey, ended up in Spain where he is currently awaiting asylum.

To his surprise, the agents initially seemed not to have realized he’d fled.

“You’re starting to wear me out. You never pick up the phone,” the first agent wrote five months after Ivan’s departure. “Don’t force me to come find you.”

Several months later they seemed to have connected the dots.

People gather at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin during a demonstration on Ukraine’s Independence Day in August 2024. | Renato Franco Bueno/NurPhoto via Getty Images

“Why did you go abroad?” the second agent wrote. “You’d better call me real quick.”

After that, the line went quiet.

“Either their [tracking] system doesn’t work well ,or they have a million people like me and they’ve decided to just drop it,” Ivan said.

He said he didn’t blame those who, under pressure, comply and become informants.

“It’s foolish to expect everyone to be a hero,” he said.

‘A valuable target’

It’s not clear how successful the FSB has been in recruiting informants within opposition circles. But Ivan’s story is not unique, noted Kashevarov, who said he personally knew two similar cases where the FSB had tried to recruit former activists.

Though Russians living in exile in Europe might be harder to reach physically, they are unlikely to be out of the FSB’s sights, said Kirill Shamiev, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and co-author of a report on Russian émigrés in Europe.

He said their status as exiles can leave them vulnerable: Many face financial hardship, uncertain legal status, and have family members in Russia who can be used as leverage against them.

“It makes them valuable targets for Russian intelligence,” said Shamiev.

In an attempt to fight back against Russian sabotage and spying, European governments have widely sought to curtail the communities of Russian exiles living within their borders.

Some have restricted visa regimes, including for those seeking humanitarian protection. Others, like Lithuania, have placed limits on how often Russian residents in the country can travel to Russia.

For some dissidents, heightened suspicion following the arrest of Rogov, the Russian student facing trial in Poland, has worsened an already fraught existence.

“For those of us who oppose the war, life is hard enough as it is,” said Artyom Vazhenkov, an opposition activist. “Back home [in Russia], you’re an enemy, a traitor, an enemy of the state. And now abroad, [you’re seen as] an FSB agent.”

He found it difficult to believe that Rogov, whom he credited with having helped him stay alive and “not be beaten to death” after they were jailed together in Belarus after an anti-government protest in 2020, could have worked for the Russian government.

“We live in an atmosphere of mistrust,” agreed Anastasia Shevchenko, a prominent opposition politician who knew Rogov. “And because of the efforts of the Russian authorities, this mistrust towards each other is growing and growing.”

Not knowing whom to confide in made it “impossible” to work, she added.

Shamiev and Soldatov both said the recruitment of Russians requires extra vigilance on the part of Europe’s intelligence services.

But they also cautioned against European countries increasing the hurdles faced by Russian exiles. Ultimately, “you want [Russians] to integrate because this is the best vaccine against illegal activities,” said Shamiev.