Lithuania charges Ukrainian man over alleged GRU parcel arson plot

With its own officers finding it harder to operate in Europe since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the GRU increasingly relies on intermediaries to recruit people through messaging services such as Telegram, according to investigative files from Lithuania's State Security Department obtained by the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, of which POLITICO is a part. Often motivated by money, these disposable agents carry out individual assignments: take a photograph, mail a parcel, move something from A to B. Recruits may know little about the wider operation, and anyone who gets caught can be replaced.

According to the Lithuanian investigative files, Kovacs' involvement began on June 27, 2024, when someone contacted him on Telegram with a request. He barely knew the man, but the two had been introduced by a mutual friend, Andrei Baburov, a former Russian submarine commander who was also the godfather of Kovacs' 11-year-old son. A courier had fallen ill, and Kovacs was asked to collect a package and take it urgently to Vilnius, nearly four hours away by car. He agreed, collecting the package from a locker outside a supermarket in Riga using a code sent to him on Telegram. He insists he was not paid.

That same day, he drove to Vilnius with his nephew. His contact on Telegram directed him to an underground parking garage. Kovacs parked outside, left the vehicle unlocked and walked away with his nephew. When they returned, the package had disappeared from the trunk. Kovacs says he had gone to buy a charging cable for his phone.

The man believed by Polish and Lithuanian investigators to have collected the package from Kovacs' car was another Ukrainian, a trained chef who had spent five years in a Russian penal colony after being convicted of rape. By the summer of 2024, he was living in Poland and receiving instructions through Telegram from a handler who promised him €4,000 a month. The following day, the chef allegedly took the massage pillows to a holiday apartment rented under a false name. He also had tubes of cosmetics filled with potentially explosive nitromethane. A video filmed inside the Airbnb apartment and later found on a suspect's phone shows four boxes containing the massage devices and cosmetic products. According to the Lithuanian investigative files, another intermediary was supposed to come and get the devices but could not find the entrance to the apartment complex. The chef's handler changed the plan and ordered him to activate the ignition devices himself. The chef refused, according to an indictment.

The GRU, contacted through the Russian government's Press Service, did not reply to a request for comment.