The Myth of the Disposable Agent

What a London arson trial reveals about Russia’s intelligence doctrine—and the West’s dangerous misreading of it

On October 24, 2025, Justice Cheema-Grubb delivered her sentencing remarks in a wood-panelled courtroom at London’s Central Criminal Court. The case before her—Rex v. Dylan Earl and others—involved a warehouse fire, a kidnapping plot, and a cast of young men who had stumbled, or been lured, into the service of a foreign power. “In past years,” the judge observed, her voice carrying the particular weight that British jurists reserve for matters of state, “our parents and grandparents would have had a simple term for what Dylan Earl and Jake Reeves did: treason.”

Dylan Earl, a twenty-year-old drug dealer from Leicester with no prior convictions, received twenty-three years—seventeen in custody, six on extended license. The court deemed him a “dangerous offender” under British law. His co-defendants drew sentences nearly as severe: Jake Reeves received thirteen years; Nii Kojo Mensah, ten; Jakeem Rose, nine years and ten months; Ugnius Asmena, eight; Ashton Evans, ten. Combined, the court handed down more than seventy years. These were the first convictions under the National Security Act 2023, legislation described as the most significant overhaul of British espionage law in a century. As the Crown Prosecution Service noted, the new statute finally allowed prosecutors to charge preparatory acts of violence conducted on behalf of a foreign power—offenses that had previously slipped through legal cracks.

The case deserves attention not merely for the severity of its sentences but for what it reveals about the architecture of contemporary Russian intelligence operations—and for how thoroughly it dismantles a concept that has recently gained currency in Western analytical circles: the “disposable agent.”

The story of Dylan Earl begins, as so many modern stories of radicalization do, with a messaging app. On June 23, 2023, Earl joined a Telegram channel called “AP WAGNER CHAT”—a small forum of forty-seven members posting pro-Russian propaganda in Russian. The Wagner Group had been proscribed as a terrorist organization in Britain just three months later, in September 2023. Originally a private military contractor, Wagner had been absorbed into the Russian state apparatus following its abortive mutiny that June. Its new portfolio, as Justice Cheema-Grubb noted in her remarks, included “intelligence activities, including the garnering of potential individual non-state actors in European countries.”

Earl quickly established contact with two profiles: Privet Bot and Lucky Strike. The judge described the mechanism with characteristic precision: “The hidden hand of the internet delivered results because anonymous recruiter proxies operating through internet chatrooms, usually on encrypted platforms, found within the United Kingdom young men who were prepared to undergo a form of radicalisation and betray their country for what seemed easy money.”

CNN labeled this model “gig workers for terrorism”—a phrase that captures the superficial novelty while missing, perhaps, something essential about what was actually happening.

Before Earl received his first operational assignment, he underwent a period of assessment. On March 12, 2024, he informed online contacts that he was “working for a PMC”—a private military company—and would pay well for intelligence. One contact claimed to be a serving member of the British armed forces, offering to provide “whatever information your superiors want, as long as it’s nothing too crazy.” Four days later, Privet Bot asked whether Earl could access bank accounts containing funds destined for Ukraine, or perhaps obtain frozen Russian assets slated for transfer to Kyiv. The handler sought introductions to those who were “our kindred spirit.”

This is not the language of a one-time transaction. It is the systematic construction of a network, the careful testing of a prospective agent’s capabilities—precisely the methodology described in declassified KGB training materials, where each task serves simultaneously as a reliability test and an assessment of developmental potential.

Shortly after 11:30 P.M. on March 20, 2024, a team assembled by Earl set fire to a warehouse on the Cromwell Industrial Estate in East London. The facility belonged to Oddisey Ltd. and Meest UK Ltd., both companies involved in logistics for Ukraine, including the delivery of Starlink satellite equipment. Large trucks departed the warehouses once or twice weekly, each carrying at least fifteen hundred parcels of humanitarian aid.

Earl did not participate in the attack physically. He recruited Jake Reeves, who in turn recruited Mensah. Mensah devised a simple plan—three men and a car—and brought in Rose and Asmena. Mensah filmed the arson and live-streamed it to Earl via Telegram.

The results: eight fire engines, sixty firefighters, damages exceeding £1.3 million. A truck driver named Mr. Harasym, who had been sleeping in his vehicle nearby, attempted repeatedly to extinguish the flames—the court commended his courage. Residents of adjacent apartment blocks were evacuated. No one was injured, though the prosecution noted that this owed more to fortune than planning.

The BBC posed the obvious question: “Why small-time criminals burned a London warehouse for Russia?” The answer lies in the recruitment mechanism—the promise of easy money for an ostensibly simple task.

But here is where the story becomes instructive. The execution disappointed Earl’s handlers. Russian profiles criticized the operation as “clumsy”: “You rushed to set fire to those warehouses without my approval. Now it will be impossible to pay for this. We could have burned the warehouses much better if we had synchronized our actions.” Earl received five thousand euros in cryptocurrency rather than the promised sum.

If Earl were truly a “disposable agent”—as the fashionable terminology would have it—the story should end here. An incompetent operative, a disappointing result, relationship terminated.

The opposite occurred.

Privet Bot directed Earl’s attention to new targets: Hedonism, an exclusive wine shop in Mayfair, and Hide, a Michelin-starred restaurant. Both establishments belong to Yevgeny Chichvarkin, a Russian businessman and dissident who had been vocal in his criticism of Putin and the war against Ukraine.

The New York Times described what followed as “the wild Russian plot to burn a London restaurant and kidnap its owner.” Earl received a series of escalating assignments:

Reconnaissance. He commissioned detailed surveillance of both locations. The court viewed footage showing careful documentation of layouts, entrances, and surroundings.

Kidnapping. Earl wrote to Reeves that Chichvarkin should be captured so he could be “exiled to Russia to face prison.”

Bombing. The conspirators discussed improvised explosive devices. Reeves sent Mensah a video of such a device, asking whether he knew anyone willing to carry out an explosion in Mayfair for twenty to thirty thousand pounds.

Privet Bot issued new operational guidelines: “The next fire must be properly approved by me, and I must know the place and time in advance.”

This is the language of a case officer tightening control over a promising but inexperienced agent after an initial operation. Feedback, correction, new protocols—these are the hallmarks of a handler-agent relationship, not a one-off transaction in what analysts have taken to calling the “gig economy” of Russian sabotage.

Earl was building something. Ashton Evans, nineteen, began as a drug contact. Gradually, Earl initiated him into Wagner operations, sending him a link to “Grey Zone”—the Wagner Group’s official propaganda channel, with more than five hundred thousand subscribers—which since 2022 had published recruitment advertisements inviting Europeans to “join the battle against Ukraine’s western supporters” by contacting a Telegram user named “Privet Bot.”

Evans received part of the warehouse’s postal code three days before the arson. He later offered to organize the Hedonism attack for twenty-five thousand pounds. The two discussed technical details—whether it needed to be an explosion, or whether a fire would suffice. Earl explained that the building must be “reduced to ashes, must need to be knocked down and rebuilt”—otherwise, payment would be only twenty-five per cent.

Earl asked Evans whether he could put him in touch with the I.R.A. or the Kinahan cartel, an international organized-crime syndicate.

The international dimension was unmistakable. The day after the London arson, Earl wrote to a contact: “They have a warehouse in the Czech Republic to burn for thirty-five thousand.” Ten days later, a warehouse belonging to Meest in Spain was set ablaze using an accelerant.

The Metropolitan Police extracted fifty-six gigabytes of data from Earl’s phone: 5,702 instant messages, 1,244 emails, 51,528 images, 3,629 videos, 183 documents, 4,840 social-media files. Screenshots showed a cryptocurrency wallet worth £58,425. Photographs depicted cash bundled in stacks of approximately sixty thousand, forty thousand, and seventy-five thousand pounds. A handwritten ledger mentioned more than two hundred thousand pounds held by Earl’s mother. A drug-trafficking expert concluded that Earl had been operating as a wholesale dealer, not a street-level pusher.

This is not the profile of a “disposable” operative. This is the profile of a systematically developed asset in which Russian intelligence invested time, money, and operational attention for nearly a year.

The term “disposable agent” entered Western analytical discourse in late 2024. The Royal United Services Institute, in a report titled “Responding to Russian Sabotage Financing,” introduced phrases like “agents for a day” and described the “gig-economy era” of Russian sabotage. Sky News amplified the narrative, reporting that “Russia is waging hybrid war on UK and Europe through ‘disposable agents.'”

The argument was straightforward: following the mass expulsion of Russian diplomats from European capitals in 2022, Moscow had been forced to adapt. Instead of traditional agents run by officers with diplomatic cover, Russian services were now recruiting random individuals via Telegram, paying in cryptocurrency for discrete tasks, and abandoning operatives immediately after each mission.

Statistics supported the narrative. Sabotage incidents in Europe rose from two in 2022 to twelve in 2023 to thirty-four in 2024—a seventeen-hundred-per-cent increase in two years. NATO described the threat level as “the highest on record.”

But a quantitative increase in incidents does not imply a doctrinal shift in agent development.

Kevin Riehle, a lecturer in intelligence and international security at Brunel University London and a former career intelligence officer, published a sharp critique of the concept in The Moscow Times. In a parallel piece on LinkedIn and an analysis for the Euro-Atlantic Council, he elaborated his argument: the term “disposable agent” corresponds neither to the historical record of Soviet and Russian intelligence operations nor—as the Earl case demonstrates—to contemporary practice.

Soviet services never recruited agents with the intention of discarding them. The logic of intelligence economics argues unambiguously against disposability:

Every recruitment carries the risk of exposure. Every captured agent reveals operational methods to the adversary. Every failure makes hostile territory more hostile still.

“Allowing agents to get caught,” Riehle writes, “is a waste of effort and resources, especially in a sparse recruitment environment. It makes hostile territory even more hostile, as counterintelligence services are alerted to Russian methods.”

Instead of disposability, the KGB employed a model of progressive development. An agent would begin with simple tasks—observation, minor favors, radio reporting. His reliability would be systematically assessed. Those who demonstrated potential received gradually more complex missions and tradecraft training.

The case of Masaji Shii illustrates a model in which prisoners of war were treated as potential long-term assets rather than disposable resources. After 1945, hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers were sent to labor camps in the Soviet Union, where—beyond exploitation as a workforce—they were subjected to systematic political indoctrination with an eye toward later use following repatriation. In available scholarship, Shii appears as one of the prisoners who underwent ideological “preparation” during his time in the U.S.S.R. and was subsequently returned to Japan as a Moscow loyalist, tasked with maintaining contact and passing information.

Against this background, his later career takes on particular significance. After returning to Japan and a period of gradually building credibility, Shii obtained employment as a linguist with the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps—which, in light of his earlier formation in Soviet camps, meant the effective placement of an agent inside an adversary’s intelligence service.

Yevgeny Yevgenyevich Runge, a KGB lieutenant colonel operating in West Germany under cover as a vending-machine dealer, ran several small but highly effective networks in Bonn and other cities for eleven years. One of his agents, Leopold Pieschel—an employee of the French mission—stole the key to a safe and systematically photographed classified NATO documents. Another, the waiter Martin Marggraf, planted miniature microphones during receptions at the presidential villa and at Palais Schaumburg, the Chancellor’s residence.

When Runge made contact with the C.I.A. in West Berlin in October 1967 and requested asylum, American commentators called his defection the most significant “capture” of a Communist operative since the Second World War. Five of his subordinates were arrested in its aftermath, and the information he provided led to the arrest or close surveillance of approximately twenty other agents.

The scale of effort invested in preparing such an illegal—years of language training, legend construction, cover documentation, and cultural acclimatization in West German society—indicates that from Moscow’s perspective, the agents he ran constituted a long-term asset, not a “disposable” instrument.

Documentation from Czechoslovak and East German intelligence archives reveals that during the Cold War, the KGB and satellite services built extensive networks of “agents-saboteurs” across multiple countries, prepared for planning—and, in the event of escalation or war—executing strikes against Western critical infrastructure.

The Czechoslovak Služba zvláštního určení (Special Purpose Service), established in April 1963 in response to the Berlin and Cuban crises, was chartered to prepare and conduct sabotage, subversion, and other operations targeting energy systems, oil pipelines, and centers of “psychological subversion”—including Radio Free Europe in Munich.

The structure of this formation was pyramidal: officers under diplomatic cover directed illegals, who in turn managed networks of support agents, access agents, and specialized agents-saboteurs trained in the use of explosives, chemical agents, or biological means. The documents also describe maintaining reserves of agents-saboteurs “at home” for use in the event of war, as well as employing individuals with access to infrastructure as “access agents.”

This model corresponds well to the profile of contemporary recruits engaged for money or other immediate benefits—as in the case of Dylan Earl, a drug dealer looking for easy cash.

The Earl case reveals six indicators that distinguish a developing agent from a disposable operative—and that should serve as a checklist for counterintelligence:

Repeated tasking from the same handler network. Earl received successive missions from Privet Bot and Lucky Strike over nearly a year. This is not how one treats a “disposable” operative; it is the systematic management of a developing asset.

Progressive escalation of complexity. From initial testing (questions about bank accounts, introductions to “kindred spirits”) through warehouse arson to kidnapping plots and bombing plans in central London. This is textbook progression from simple tasks to high-risk operations.

Operational feedback and correction. After the botched first operation, Privet Bot did not terminate the relationship. Instead, he provided detailed criticism and new guidelines. This is the language of a case officer, not a one-time employer.

Expansion of the agent’s own recruitment network. Earl systematically built a hierarchical structure: case officer (Privet Bot) → organizing agent (Earl) → sub-agents (Reeves, Evans) → operatives (Mensah, Rose, Asmena). This is the classic pyramid structure described in Cold War sabotage-network documentation.

Geographic expansion. Earl coordinated activities in the Czech Republic (a proposed arson for thirty-five thousand), maintained links to an attack in Spain, and sought contacts with the I.R.A. and the Kinahan cartel. This suggests ambitions extending well beyond a local operation.

Pursuit of access to sensitive institutions. The attempted recruitment of a British soldier, inquiries about paramilitary contacts. These are strategic objectives, not tactical ones—the kind that would be economically absurd if Earl were being treated as disposable.

The Earl case is not an isolated incident. It forms part of a broader sabotage campaign whose scale has increased dramatically since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

According to compiled data: two incidents of arson or serious sabotage in 2022; twelve in 2023; thirty-four in 2024. A seventeen-hundred-per-cent increase in two years.

In October 2025, a Polish court convicted three Ukrainian citizens for their roles in a series of sabotage attacks across Poland and the Baltic states. The same day, a Lithuanian court convicted another Ukrainian for an arson attack on an IKEA store in Vilnius. Prosecutors stated that the defendants were part of an organized group operating across Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, and Russia.

In November 2025, an explosion on the Warsaw–Lublin railway line—a critical route for aid transport to Ukraine—prompted Prime Minister Donald Tusk to call it an “unprecedented act of sabotage.” Poland closed its last Russian consulate and deployed thousands of soldiers to protect critical infrastructure.

RUSI analysts document similar incidents in Germany (a parcel-bomb plot), France (Stars of David painted at the direction of a Russian handler), Estonia (a plot to destroy the property of a government minister), and the Czech Republic (the 2014 Vrbětice ammunition-depot explosions, attributed to G.R.U. Unit 29155).

Riehle poses the fundamental question: “Thinking of them as ‘disposable’ allows some agents, like Masaji Shii in the 1950s, to develop without being noticed and remain in place for more damaging operations later. Who are those agents today?”

The Earl case illustrates the risk with surgical precision. From joining a Telegram channel to planning a dissident’s kidnapping and bombings in central London took less than a year. Earl attempted to recruit a British soldier. He sought contacts with the I.R.A. He coordinated operations spanning at least three European countries.

Had he not been arrested in April 2024, what would the next stage of his development have looked like? By 2027, might he have been a penetration of the British military? By 2030, might he have been running his own sabotage network across Central Europe?

The “disposable agent” framework suggests there is no cause for concern: these are merely opportunistic amateurs whom Moscow will abandon after a single failed mission. The Earl case demonstrates precisely the opposite: Russian services treat even disappointing operatives as potential material for further development, increasing control and escalating assignments.

The term “disposable agent” probably originated with educational intent—a warning to potential recruits that Moscow views them as pawns. As deterrent messaging, it has value: Who wants to risk imprisonment for handlers who will abandon them?

The problem is that the term has migrated from public communications into analytical frameworks. Telling a potential recruit “Russia will discard you” may discourage cooperation. Telling counterintelligence analysts “these agents are disposable” encourages precisely the dismissive posture that allows developing agents to progress undetected.

The first is psychological warfare. The second is analytical malpractice—malpractice that could cost lives.

Justice Cheema-Grubb captured the essence of the case: “This case is about the efforts of the Russian Federation to gain pernicious global influence using social media to enlist saboteurs, vast distances from Moscow. Physically no borders were crossed and no Russian national was exposed to discovery or capture.”

This is a description of remote agent handling in a hostile environment—precisely the same operational concept that Soviet services employed throughout the Cold War. Then, agents were instructed to purchase a specific model of shortwave radio. Now, they are instructed to install Telegram with end-to-end encryption.

The Center for European Policy Analysis report “War Without End: Russia’s Shadow Warfare” observes: “The strategic revival of Russian intelligence operations is deeply rooted in the continuity of Soviet ideology…. Russian hybrid warfare is not simply a clandestine strategy designed to exploit Western weaknesses. It is rather a reflection of a deeper ideological and institutional logic, a neo-Stalinist threat framework that views warfare as continuous and ubiquitous.”

The technology has changed. The doctrine has not.

Riehle notes: “We are enamored with the supposed newness of Moscow’s operations and with finding new labels for them. But with Russia, looking to history is more valuable.”

The sentences in Rex v. Dylan Earl and others send a clear signal. “The sentences I must impose,” Justice Cheema-Grubb declared, “demonstrate the true price of what might sound like easy money.”

But the case should also serve as a warning to Western counterintelligence services.

Dylan Earl was arrested after less than a year of activity. In that time, he progressed from joining a propaganda channel on Telegram to organizing an arson attack on a warehouse supplying humanitarian aid to Ukraine; to planning the kidnapping of a Russian dissident; to preparing bombings in central London; to attempting to recruit a British soldier; to seeking contacts with the I.R.A. and international crime syndicates; to coordinating operations across at least three European countries.

How many others are on a similar trajectory—but have not yet been arrested?

The “disposable agent” framework suggests they are merely opportunistic amateurs whom Moscow will abandon after a single botched mission. The Earl case shows something quite different: Russian services treat even disappointing operatives as potential for further development, tightening control and escalating assignments.

Riehle’s question remains open and urgent: “Who are those agents today?”

The answer requires abandoning fashionable but erroneous categorizations. It requires recognizing that today’s arsonist may be tomorrow’s penetration—just as a Japanese prisoner of war in 1945 became a penetration of American counterintelligence in the nineteen-fifties.

This analysis draws on the sentencing remarks in Rex v. Dylan Earl and others (Central Criminal Court, October 24, 2025) and Kevin Riehle’s article in The Moscow Times.

Robert Nogacki

Founder and Managing Partner of Skarbiec Law Firm, recognized by Dziennik Gazeta Prawna as one of the best tax advisory firms in Poland (2023, 2024). Legal advisor with 19 years of experience, serving Forbes-listed entrepreneurs and innovative start-ups. One of the most frequently quoted experts on commercial and tax law in the Polish media, regularly publishing in Rzeczpospolita, Gazeta Wyborcza, and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna. Author of the publication “AI Decoding Satoshi Nakamoto. Artificial Intelligence on the Trail of Bitcoin’s Creator” and co-author of the award-winning book “Bezpieczeństwo współczesnej firmy” (Security of a Modern Company). LinkedIn profile: 18 500 followers, 4 million views per year. Awards: 4-time winner of the European Medal, Golden Statuette of the Polish Business Leader, title of “International Tax Planning Law Firm of the Year in Poland.” He specializes in strategic legal consulting, tax planning, and crisis management for business.