‘We are here. Join us.’ What the trial of two Wagner Group promoters in Poland reveals about Russia’s covert campaign in Europe
In mid-February, a court in Krakow sentenced two Russian citizens to five and a half years in prison for posting hundreds of recruitment ads for the Wagner mercenary group in Polish cities. Convicted of terrorism and espionage, the two men were found guilty of working on behalf of Russian intelligence services as part of what the judge characterized as a “hybrid war” against Poland, carried out amid Russia’s full-scale war in neighboring Ukraine. The Polish investigation also revealed that the two men were recruited through Russian nationalist groups linked to the Spartak Moscow soccer fan movement and prominent “Orthodox oligarch” Konstantin Malofeev. For Meduza, Polish journalist Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska reports on the landmark trial and what it reveals about Russia’s covert operations in Europe.
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In early August 2023, under a scorching summer sun, Poland was getting ready for its Armed Forces Day parade. It was meant to be a special one, unprecedented in size and scope. Two thousand local and allied soldiers would march down Warsaw’s main artery, accompanied by the country’s newest purchases: Abrams and K2 tanks, Patriot anti-ballistic batteries, F-35 planes, Black Hawk helicopters, and the pride of local technical innovation — the Borsuk infantry fighting vehicle. Poland, on the path to modernizing its armed forces following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, wanted to project its power and celebrate its new military might in style.
But as preparations for the parade were in full swing, the streets of Poland’s second-largest city, Krakow, filled with curious advertisements. In tourist areas of the old town, white stickers with the logo of the Wagner Group — a state-funded military company that Russia was formally disbanding following a short-lived mutiny — appeared on garbage cans and lamp posts. They bore a simple message: “We are here. Join us.”
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The stickers, which included QR codes leading to the mercenary group’s recruitment website, did not go unnoticed. Ukraine’s neighbor and one of its closest allies in the ongoing war, Poland has long been unequivocally anti-Russian. It came as no surprise, therefore, when local police began receiving calls from concerned citizens about two suspicious men equipped with the stickers touring Krakow on bicycles. They were caught in the act the following day — in Warsaw.
‘An innovative approach to contemporary threats’
A year and a half later, standing before the judge and a group of journalists in a modernist courthouse in Krakow’s administrative district, Russian citizens Alexey Titov and Andrey Gontarev heard the verdict: five and a half years of imprisonment on charges of terrorism and espionage they had both denied.
While putting up stickers can hardly be seen as an act of terror in itself, in her almost hour-long justification of the verdict, Judge Ewa Karp-Sieklucka was clear: it was the context that mattered. With the war grinding on in Ukraine, any action aimed at creating distrust in Poland’s ability to defend itself, disinforming the public, and spreading panic must be treated as an act against national security.
“The purpose of the above actions was to stir doubt in our country’s ability to ensure its security. Such actions were aimed at harming Poland and are an element of the so-called hybrid warfare conducted by the Russian security services,” Karp-Sieklucka explained.
The judge used the expression “hybrid war” seven times in her speech. And while she did not hand down the eight-year prison sentence the prosecution had requested, the verdict reflects a growing consensus that Russia’s meddling should be met with a definite response.
The Warsaw prosecutor’s office has also launched a separate case against four individuals — likely based in Russia — who acted as Titov’s and Gontarev’s handlers. “During the execution of the task, [the defendants] were in constant contact with an established supervisor perpetrator who demanded to see the results [of their work] and, when it was necessary to make new arrangements, had to contact the main supervisor,” Karp-Sieklucka said in court.
“This is an innovative approach to contemporary international threats looming in Poland and in all of Europe due to the aggressive and imperialist policies of the Russian Federation,” prosecutor Tomasz Dudek told Meduza after the trial. “The goal is always the same: to discredit, ridicule, and weaken the social, political, and economic potential of another country by taking actions that are limited only by our imagination.”
Though the sentence may seem harsh in relation to the deed, experts who spoke to Meduza agree that this is the right strategy for dealing with the hybrid threats coming from Moscow.
“Until recently, such cases would have ended with much lighter sentences. It was only in 2023 that changes were made to the penal code, which expanded the list of activities that may be considered a form of espionage,” explained Filip Bryjka, an analyst in the security program at the Polish Institute of International Affairs. “Even graffiti may be considered disseminating disinformation for the benefit of foreign intelligence, for which the minimum penalty is eight years in prison. Such severe penalties are also intended to deter potential collaborators.”
“Hybrid activities are finally being taken seriously. I believe this is a step in the right direction because what Poland has been dealing with since 2023 indicates that the Russians are becoming increasingly bold and offensive in their actions; they are testing our reaction mechanisms and our weak points,” Bryjka continued. “Such actions may indicate preparation of the ground for a potential future armed conflict against NATO. Actions aimed at sowing unrest and influencing society are the initial phase of conflicts.”
‘A very silly case’
Since the full-scale war in Ukraine began, Poland has been one of the main targets of Russia’s sabotage operations. Though the number of experienced and professional Russian intelligence officers stationed across the continent has fallen due to European countries expelling hundreds of diplomats and undercover agents, Moscow’s hybrid activities have only increased.
In a recent report, the EBU’s Investigative Journalism Network analyzed close to 80 suspicious incidents in Europe since the beginning of 2024, and found that 60 can be classified as “suspected or confirmed Russian hybrid actions.” Another study from the Center for Strategic and International Studies recorded 34 verified Russian sabotage attacks across Europe in 2024, nearly a three-fold increase from 2023.
As the Investigative Journalism Network’s report points out, these covert actions are increasingly attributed to “low-level operatives,” that is, people recruited via Telegram and other social networks for tasks ranging from putting up posters and photographing strategic infrastructure to acts of arson and vandalism.
This decentralization of sabotage operations and the recruitment of largely random individuals in need of cash, mostly from the Russian-speaking Ukrainian and Belarusian diasporas, is both low cost and low risk. But it can also be less effective. Lacking professional training, these assets often get caught.
According to Bryjka’s tally, Poland arrested 42 individuals accused of working on behalf of Russia and Belarus in 2024, compared to a total of 46 such arrests between 2016 and 2023. In late February, a court in Wroclaw sentenced a Ukrainian national to eight years in prison for plotting to set fire to buildings located near “strategic infrastructure” in the city. He was arrested in January 2024 before he even began the job.
The fact that Titov and Gontarev traveled to Poland from Russia, making stops in other countries along the way, distinguishes the Wagner Group sticker case from other incidents that have made headlines in recent months. According to the prosecution, the pair flew through Turkey, entered the E.U. on Schengen visas in Vienna, and then made their way to Krakow in a rental car. Their operation was well prepared, and, according to the prosecution, they were supposed to meet a local journalist for an interview while in Warsaw. Who this person is and what they wanted to discuss remains a mystery; the pair were arrested before they could meet their media contact.
According to the defense team, Titov and Gontarev fell victim to poor judgment and their desperate need for cash. “It looked more like the actions of the Olsen gang than Stierlitz,” Gontarev’s lawyer, Dariusz Tokarczyk, told journalists after the verdict, comparing a group of harmless criminals from a Danish comedy to a fictional Soviet super spy.
According to electronic communications presented by the prosecution, Titov and Gontarev’s handlers urged them to avoid CCTV cameras and Ukrainian nationals. But putting up stickers in busy tourist areas undetected proved a risky task.
“Such people don’t look highly trained to me because if you put up stickers in public places, you will sooner or later attract attention. Most likely, they did not do it of their own free will, of course, but this is just a very silly case,” said Irina Borogan, a Russian investigative journalist and expert on Russia’s security and intelligence services.
‘A specific psychological effect’
As the Polish investigation revealed, Titov and Gontarev were far from random individuals. A father of five with ailing elderly parents, Gontarev ran a sewing business in Moscow but — as he claimed in court — was struggling financially due to debts and his wife being unemployed. In turn, Titov claimed his only source of income was what he made investing on the Moscow stock exchange.
According to their own testimonies, the two were recruited by Stepan Krivosheev, whom they knew through the Spartak Moscow soccer fan movement. Given their financial situations, the $2,000 and an all-expenses paid trip to Europe he promised seemed like a good deal.
A well-known persona in Spartak fan and hooligan circles, Krivosheev has long been associated with Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeev, the owner of the ultra-nationalist Orthodox media group Tsargrad and chairman of the pro-monarchist Double Headed Eagle Society. According to media reports, Malofeev’s organization has been recruiting soccer fans to fight in Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, funneling them into a single reconnaissance detachment of the 106th Airborne Division known as “Moskva.” Krivosheev and Malofeev did not respond to Meduza’s questions.
The Polish investigation revealed that both Titov and Gontarev were active members of the Double Headed Eagle Society and helped raise funds for Spartak Moscow fans fighting in Ukraine. “I absolutely do not plead guilty to espionage. I never knew that the Double Headed Eagle or Tsargrad were connected to the secret services. I believed that these organizations were engaged in charitable activities,” Gontarev said in court.
He then went on to describe his fundraising efforts for the “Moskva” detachment as “humanitarian aid” for his fellow soccer fans who had been mobilized to fight in Ukraine. “I, like all people in the Russian Federation, knew that the guys did not have enough medicine, clothing, or funds to purchase these things. I could also be mobilized and wanted to help my friends who were part of this battalion to survive. I helped them get medicine, personal hygiene products, and personal protective equipment,” Gontarev said.
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The prosecution also presented a photograph of Titov standing directly behind Russian ultra-nationalist philosopher Alexander Dugin at the funeral of his daughter Daria, who was killed by a car bomb in August 2022. “There were a lot of people at Dugin’s daughter’s funeral. I was there as well as others,” Titov said during the trial. On his phone, Polish police found scans of passports with photographs of Dugin and Yevgeny Prigozhin — the late founder of the Wagner Group — issued under fake names. He also had a copy of a fake passport with his own picture. In his statement to the court, Titov said the documents were all “a joke.”
The analysis of the men’s phones also revealed that they underwent military training at a complex in northern Moscow belonging to the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry, as well as at the Vityaz Special Training Center, a private security training facility run by Sergey Lysyuk, a former Russian special forces commander.
Finally, the prosecution also revealed that Titov and Gontarev were involved in discussions with Israeli and Chinese companies about weapons and military equipment purchases — and that they acted on behalf of people higher up. Photos found on their phones also revealed that earlier in the summer of 2023, Gontarev and Titov had traveled to Berlin and Paris, where they put up stickers discrediting NATO. However, the Polish investigation did not link them to any other suspicious activity.
Why the Russian security services decided to risk their own people to put up Wagner Group recruitment stickers in Poland instead of using low-cost local assets remains unclear. “Logically speaking, it would be much more beneficial from Russia’s perspective to recruit collaborators via Telegram. However, it seems to me that the nature of the task and the material they were to distribute could [have been] met with a refusal by potential agents recruited locally,” Bryjka said.
The fact that the two showed up just days before Poland’s biggest military parade and planned to meet a local journalist also suggests that there may have been a psychological element at play.
“Maybe they did other things that we don’t know about. But if you have a serious task and you get caught on something minor, then it’s a pointless action. Maybe that’s what it was all about: to have such a trial, for people to notice it [and] talk about it,” said Vincent Seversky, a former Polish foreign intelligence officer turned spy novelist. “The point is to cause a specific psychological effect in society and in the information space. It’s about sowing confusion, doubt, [and] signaling to Polish society: Watch out, we’re nearby.”
Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska, Krakow