In 2024, just before New Year's Eve, while many Russians were calling their family and friends to send them holiday wishes, a 21-year-old computer science student living in Moscow received a very different call, Politico reports.
“Fate keeps taking you away – from the prosecution, from the army. I hope everything turns out well for you,” the caller told her. The wishes then took a more somber turn: “Don't forget your homeland. And pass on more information.”
“Send me a report. Don't make me follow you around”
The student, whom Politico is identifying under the pseudonym “Ivan” to protect his identity, says he felt intimidated but that the call did not come as a surprise.
During the previous year, he had been harassed by the same man and his colleague, both Russian intelligence officers. It had all started 16 months earlier, after Ivan had been detained by them and offered a bargain: provide information 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 trove of recorded text messages and conversations between Ivan and his handlers, materials made available to Politico.
The publication notes that they provide a rare documentary insight into how Russian intelligence agencies recruit, coerce and manage informants at a time when the Kremlin is waging an expanding campaign of sabotage and espionage across Europe.
The conversations, which took place between the summers of 2023 and 2025, reveal a “good cop, bad cop” tactic to pressure Ivan to infiltrate an opposition group's online communications and report from Moscow on its activities in Europe.
The men were keen on seemingly mundane details, and their interest was not limited to Russian citizens. They also wanted concrete information about those who helped the emigrants in Europe, whether it was language teachers or officials in the foreign ministries of the countries where the dissidents had found new homes.
“Find out who is in Europe and in which country, and who is helping them, including specialist organisations,” one message reads.
When Ivan told one of the agents about a rally in Berlin in November 2024 to protest Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the agent demanded more: “I tell you, describe it, describe it, send me a report. Don't make me follow you around.”
“We already know everything, but we would like to know more,” read another message.
A win-win situation for the FSB
Since Moscow's all-out invasion of Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of Russians have left the country, including some of the Kremlin's most vocal critics. They hoped to find safety in Europe. Instead, Politico notes, they have become both targets and desirable resources for Russian intelligence.
Andrei Soldatov, a leading expert on Russian intelligence services, says that for them, building networks of informants within expat communities serves a dual purpose.
As long as the whistleblowers remain undetected, they can provide Moscow with information about the whereabouts, personal lives and vulnerabilities of Kremlin critics after Western countries expelled dozens of Russian diplomats suspected of being undercover agents.
And if a whistleblower is caught, it breeds mistrust—both within activist circles and between them and host countries.
“Either way, it's a win-win situation for Moscow,” Soldatov told Politico.
The computer science student was jumped at the airport
According to the expert, the logic behind Moscow's intelligence services is that while Russians in exile may seem unimportant today, so did Vladimir Lenin before the 1917 revolutions that brought down the Tsar and ended more than 300 years of rule by the Romanov dynasty.
“From the perspective of the FSB, they cannot afford even a 1% probability that these people will one day undermine the political stability of Russia” or threaten the power of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Soldatov points out.
As for “Ivan,” his problems began in the summer of 2023. He had just stepped off the gangway of a plane that had landed at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport, returning from a visit to his parents who live in Russia.
That's when he was approached by two plainclothes men and two uniformed policemen, who confiscated his phone and passport.
The two plainclothes men presented themselves as high-profile case investigators from an elite FSB department tasked with crimes against the state. They showed him his IDs, too fast to read, and led him to the baggage claim.
As they waited for their luggage with Ivan, they began seemingly casually asking him questions about his personal life, his student debt and his parents — “things they couldn't have found out by monitoring my communications,” Ivan recalls. “They were looking for things to put pressure on,” he points out.
Accused of belonging to an “extremist” organization
Later, in a room used by the airport police, the conversation turned more serious. The two presented him with an organizational chart with his name and photo, as well as those of some acquaintances, accusing him – correctly – of being part of Vesna, a pro-democracy youth group.
After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Vesna had become one of the main opposition forces in the country, helping to coordinate and encourage anti-war and anti-Kremlin protests. The agents also showed Ivan another document that appeared to contain highlighted excerpts from a chat on Vesna's Telegram channel, which was deleted after a Russian court declared the organization “extremist” in December 2022.
The men gave “Ivan” a choice: either become their informant or be sent straight to prison, where he would have faced a 15-year sentence for participating in an “extremist” chat group.
After “Ivan” accepted the first option, he was made to sign a confidentiality document, then taken in an unmarked car to central Moscow, where he was released at a metro station. “We'll write to you on Telegram,” one of the men told him instead of goodbye.
Soon after, Ivan received the first message proposing a meeting outside the building where he was studying – the first of a series of face-to-face meetings.
Mostly, though, the agents kept in touch with him online, through Telegram messages and calls.
“The good cop and the bad cop” at the FSB
One of the agents, tall and thin, adopted an almost brotherly role, offering “Ivan” family advice, promising to solve “problems” related to his studies and suggesting that he could protect him from being drafted into the army and sent to the front in Ukraine.
“We discussed it, no one is going to take you into the military,” the agent wrote in late November 2024, apparently trying to calm his fears. “Ivan's” case, he promised, was under his “personal control.”
The other, more robust agent seemed responsible for maintaining compliance through intimidation.
“We had high hopes that you would help us with information, but from our interaction it does not appear that you share that desire,” he wrote ominously.
At one point, after “Ivan” had repeatedly made excuses to avoid meetings, the agent lost his temper: “I'm a decent man, don't try to take me for a fool. No one is in a hurry to be friends with you. We have a common job to do!”
The beer invitation, he continued, was “to motivate you” and to show that “we are not animals and we need your help, which so far you have not given.”
Sometimes the roles were reversed.
“Ivan, get the hell busy finding and re-establishing contact with Vesna, do you understand?” the first agent told him in a call.
“Yeah, I'm trying, I see, ok,” “Ivan” replied stressed, which seemed to irritate the agent even more.
“Why are you agitated? Am I pressuring you? Relax. Breathe. Everything will be fine. Yes?”
“Ask how and where you can go”
The two agents made no secret of what they were after: information on Kremlin critics, most of whom had gone abroad to avoid prison as Moscow cracked down on dissent after the invasion.
“Ivan's” task was to use his old connections to infiltrate the new communication channels and inform about activist networks and their protest plans, wherever they were.
“They [activiștii] they are active and constantly recruiting,” the second agent wrote to him. “The goal is to understand what concrete activities are taking place and in which countries,” he indicated.
The agents also trained him how to gain the trust of his former comrades.
“Bring up the subject of Russia being nasty and thinking of emigrating,” another message read. “Ask how and where you can go. For example, where others have settled, where you can find work.”
What they didn't know, however, was that “Ivan” was playing a double game all along.
“Don't make me come looking for you”
The young man says that in the weeks following his detention at the airport, while he waited for agents to contact him, his mental health deteriorated sharply, which was reflected in his social life and academic performance.
To collaborate was to betray his friends and, in his view, his own country. Besides, it probably wouldn't have done him any real good: once he was no longer useful, the agents would have sent him to prison anyway, he reasoned.
He decided to reveal himself to one of the people he was supposed to spy on: Alexander Kashevarov, a Vesna activist abroad.
Together, they hatched a plan: the activist would provide “Ivan” with false or innocuous information to pass on while the young man procured the necessary documents to leave Russia.
In early 2025 he succeeded and, after a circuitous journey, arrived in Spain, where he is currently awaiting asylum. To his surprise, the agents initially did not seem to realize that he had fled.
“You're starting to tire me out. You never answer the phone,” the first agent wrote five months after Ivan left. “Don't make me come looking for you.”
A few months later, they seemed to understand the situation.
“Why did you go abroad?” the second agent wrote. “You'd better call me right away.”
After that, the communication stopped.
“Either their tracking system doesn't work well or they have a million people like me and they just decided to give up,” says Ivan.
