The job offer, launched to appeal to a 17 -year -old Ukrainian refugee without work, promised a BMW car and about $ 11,000 in cash.
Daniil Bardadim, a teenager fleeing the war to Ukraine, received the offer at the beginning of last year after making his way to Warsaw in nearby Poland, according to investigators.
He accepted and was given to him a BMW, even if old, but not the money. And what probably seemed to be an attractive proposal once even more seriously. He landed in prison in Lithuania with a series of accusations of terrorism, accused of having set fire to an Ikea shop.
The work, offered through a dark group, has transformed Mr. Bardadim into an unaware soldier for Russia as part of a multiple campaign of sabotage attacks against the objectives throughout Europe, say Lithuanian investigators.
Shopping centers, warehouses, submarine cables and railways in Europe have all been affected in the last two years in what the Center for Strategic and International Studies describes as an impulse to sow the chaos led by the Russian military intelligence service, the crane.
The number of hidden Russian attacks is almost tripled between 2023 and 2024
“We have already entered a war area in Europe,” said Darius Jauniskis, outgoing director of the Lithuania state security department. “Their goal,” he said, “is to create chaos, create distrust and panic” and undermine public support to help Ukraine. “Welcome to the Second World War,” he added.
Steve Witkoff, the envoy of President Trump in the Middle East and Russia, fired as “absurd” the idea that the “Russians march throughout Europe” in a recent interview. “I don’t consider Putin as a bad guy,” he said.
This vision has left many in Europe, particularly in the countries near Russia, such as Poland and Baltic states.
“The shadow war in Lithuania and in other countries shows that Putin is ready and able to act beyond the borders of his country,” said Gabrieri Landsbergis, former foreign minister of Lithuania. The belief that the aggressive intent of Russia does not extend beyond Ukraine, he added, is “only a pious desire”.
The Mr. Bardadim attack is accused of creating last May, when an incendiary device planted in an Ikea shop in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, broke out on fire in the middle of the night. The police officers later stopped a bus on which he traveled from Lithuania to nearby Latvia and arrested him.
Among his goods on the bus there were incendiary devices that investigators believe should be used in another malicious fire in the Latvian capital, line.
The lawyer appointed by the court of Bardadim, Renata Janusyte, refused to comment on the record on the actions or reasons of his client.
Lithuania’s investigation into Mr. Bardadim has revealed surprising and often bizarre details of how sabotage operations are prepared and conducted. This includes the use of a cabinet from the Vilnius railway station to store a bag containing explosives, six cell phones, four detonators and two vibrators, whose expected use is not clear.
Because the Ukrainians would have been involved in a sabotage campaign on behalf of the archenemia of their country has raised worrying questions for Lithuania, Latvia and Poland. Those countries welcomed tens of thousands of refugees from Ukraine and have put pressure strongly for western military aid intensified to help Kiev resist Russia.
Mr. Bardadim grew up in Kherson, mainly a Russian language city in southern Ukraine near the Black Sea which, before the start of the war, hosted many residents who looked favorably looking at Russia. Mr. Bardadim’s mother still lives there. Contacted by phone in Kerson, he refused to comment.
Lithuanian investigators believe that Mr. Bardadim and others involved in the Ikea attack were mainly motivated by money. Last month, Arcturas Urbelis, the main prosecutor, described them as “young people who have not clearly experience in life” and who, due to the war in Ukraine, “found themselves in a difficult material position”.
He added that perhaps “they did not understand the final goal” of those who, hidden behind the alias on social media, have commissioned and guided their work.
People recruited from cranes “obviously not professionals”, since they are easily captured and are often in difficulty in a financial tight and attracted by “quick and easy offers”, said Jauniskis, director of the state security department.
By presenting for recruits on social media, the Intelligence agencies of Russia “eliminate a fishing network to see who will bite,” he added.
When asked if he had found evidence of the fact that Bardadim enrolled as Saboteur for loyalty to Russia, the office of the Prosecutor General of Lithuania said that “there is no information that indicates that the accused has pro-Russe opinions”.
Many of the instructions sent to Mr. Bardadim and other recruits were broadcast by telegram by a user who took the name Warrior2alpha, according to Lithuanian investigators. Another communication channel was Zengi, a Chinese messaging app.
The Ukrainian teenager has been recruited by what investigators describe as an underground Russian network directed by the crane and other Russian agencies to spread chaos. According to the Lithuanian ministries, he communicated on Zengi with an unidentified manager who uses the alias “Q”, apparently referring to the character in James Bond’s films.
The most potentially dangerous sabotage operations involved incendent innocent incomplete devices. A package flew by Vilnius in Germany from DHL broke out on fire last July in a Leipzig management center. Another package of Vilnius exploded in Birmingham, England, and a third broke out on fire in a corriere Polish company.
Western intelligence officials have blamed every episode of Russia. And Ikea’s fire was also clearly linked to Russian sabotage, said Jauniskis.
Mr. Bardadim, public ministries say, crossed the northern border of Poland with Lithuania last April. He explored possible objectives, visiting an Ikea shop in Siauliai, an oriental city and a second, larger Ikea shop in Vilnius.
Siauliai, home to a NATO aerial base, has long been at the center of Russian intelligence services. Last year, the Lithuanian police arrested an 82 -year -old pensioner there on charges of espionage after finding spy equipment at his house. Mr. Jauniskis said the man was working on the crane.
“For Russia, age, genre and ideology do not count,” Marius Cesnuulevicius, councilor for national security of the president of Lithuania, said in an interview. In addition to the annoying value of these operations, he said: “Their goal is to force us and dissuade from supporting Ukraine”.
After his scouting trip to Siauliai and Vilnius last April, Mr. Bardadim returned to Warsaw. He then returned to Vilnius and, the ministries say, on May 8 he planted an incendiary device in the bed linen section of the Ikea shop. On a timer, it exploded at the beginning of 9 May, that Russia celebrates as a “day of victory” which by marking the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in 1945.
The times were deliberated, said Cesnulevicius, councilor for national security.
“We are supporting Ukraine and, in the logic of the Kremlin, this means that we are supporting the Nazis,” he said.
The incendiary device that public ministries say that Mr. Bardadim planted hell but failed to burn the building, as apparently the plan had been.
Three days later in Warsaw, a mysterious fire that Polish investigators now believe has been caused by sabotagers recruited in Russia destroyed the largest shopping center in the city. Poland believes that Mr. Bardadim, who left Vilnius for Warsaw on the night of the Ikea operation, may have been involved.
Mr. Bardadim, according to public ministries, had accomplices in Lithuania, including a Ukrainian colleague, who contributed to the attack on Ikea and has since been arrested in Poland.
The Polish ministries have recently declared that they had also presented terrorism accusations against a Belarusian citizen who was accused of having set fire to a large hardware store in Warsaw last April.
In February, Bosnia took a Russian man, Aleksandr Bezrukavyi in Poland, who was accused of belonging to a Moscow agents cell that coordinated the sabotage operations against Polish, Baltic objectives and other NATO members.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland said last month that Lithuania’s wide investigation on the Ikea attack had “confirmed our suspicions that those responsible for the setting of fires in shopping centers in Vilnius and Warsaw are secret services of Russia”.
Jauniskis, director of the Lithuania state security department, said that Ikea’s attack “did not only concern burnt mattresses”, but part of a wider campaign to “create panic”.
He added: “Let’s talk about sabotage, but in reality this is the terrorism supported by the state”.