How Russia turned immigrants into weapons

Russia uses migration like “a tap”, which it can turn on and off to influence European leaders, experts have said.

Vladimir Putin is accused of using migration as part of his “hybrid warfare” against the West, including as leverage in political support for Ukraine.

It comes as The Telegraph reveals that one of his agents – Jan Marsalek – had been attempting to influence the flow of migrants into Europe using private armies.

There is evidence that Russia is fuelling migration in a number of ways, including physically moving people toward the EU’s borders, supporting smugglers, and increasing instability and violence in certain regions including Syria and parts of Africa.

Putin’s cronies are also accused of spreading “fake news” about migration in order to “disrupt European unity”.

Late last year, Finland closed the last of its borders with Russia after seeing a dramatic spike in the number of migrants without proper visas and documentation, mostly from the Middle East and Africa.

Elina Valtonen, the Finnish foreign minister, had said that “undoubtedly” Russia was using migration in “hybrid warfare” and in some cases they were “actively helping” migrants travel to the border.

“We discovered, for instance, in 2019, just before the European elections, that there was a deliberate attempt to push a new wave of mass migration from Turkey, Greece and so on, in the direction of northern Europe,” Mr Kleinschmidt told The Telegraph.

“The wrong information was being spread by certain people, who we suspect are Iranian and Russian agent provocateurs, people who tried to push that and said Angela Merkel will open the border again.

“We have seen a very deliberate manipulation of migration flows. We see that at the border to Poland. We have seen that at the borders to Hungary as well as, of course, from Africa. We also saw a rise in arrivals with boats from eastern Libya prior to the last Italian elections.

Mr Kleinschmidt explained: “You turn on and turn off the tap as you want, and you put European politics under pressure.

“Migration has become, as we know, the major theme for the political Right and populists saying ‘they’re coming, we have to stop that’. The Russians clearly use that theme to make Europe nervous and influence elections.”

He had been employed in 2017 to help plan for a reconstruction project in Libya, but the plan failed when it became clear that Marsalek was intent on using it for border control.

At the time Marsalek was the chief operating officer of Wirecard, the jewel in the crown of Germany’s tech sector. When the company collapsed in 2020, he fled to Moscow and is now one of Europe’s most wanted men.

Mr Kleinschmidt had been unaware that, by the time the plan failed, Marsalek had secretly bought a Russian private military company, the RSB Group. In 2016, Marsalek was involved in getting Russian boots on the ground in Libya for the first time.

Through a deal with a long-time business associate, he arranged for the private military company to carry out mine clearing for the Libyan Cement Company.

It was in an area controlled by Gen Khalifa Haftar, a Libyan warlord who controls the eastern and southern parts of the country, is the leader of the self-styled Libyan National Army, and known to have links to the Kremlin.

Along with his Russian “handler”, Stanislav Petlinsky, Marsalek had travelled to the country to meet Maj Gen Wanis Bukhamada, then commander of the Libyan National Army’s special forces, to get permission for the mercenaries to enter, those with knowledge of the meetings told The Telegraph.

Impressed by their work, Marsalek had decided to buy RSB. According to Der Spiegel, the deal was facilitated by his sending thousands of euros in cash on his private jet to purchase the company from Oleg Krinitsyn, the current owner, who stayed on as CEO.

The presence of the RSB Group in Libya is thought to have paved the way for Wagner’s mercenaries, who arrived in their thousands in the following years.

Antonio Tajani, Italy’s deputy prime minister, has said that they had intelligence that the mercenaries in the region “are very active and in contact with trafficking gangs and militia interested in migrant smuggling”.

Just months after Marsalek fled Europe in June 2020, the RSB Group was named alongside Wagner on a contract to provide security in neighbouring Sudan, it is understood.

Dr Mark Galeotti, an expert in Russian security and the director of consultancy Mayak Intelligence, told The Telegraph: “Libya is potentially one of the main thoroughfares for migrants from all across Africa to head towards Europe.

“Southern parts of Italy and the northern parts of Africa are pretty close, and there is that sense that if the Russians are able to close their grip on what’s going on in Libya, which they’re largely doing through supporting a variety of different militia movements, and particularly the warlord Haftar, then they will be in a position to open or close the migration taps as they saw fit.

“Particularly for the Mediterranean countries, many of which are already a little bit lukewarm about support for Ukraine, this would give Russia some kind of leverage.

“If they could basically say ‘you need to start scaling down your Ukraine support or else suddenly tomorrow 10,000 migrants are going to appear on boats’, or conversely, ‘if you play ball with us, we will make sure that this coast is closed to migrants’.

“That gives Russia a degree of leverage that otherwise it lacks. So that has been really one of the fairly clear objectives of the Kremlin for some time. Whoever can achieve that for the Kremlin would presumably be well reimbursed.”

‘Marsalek and Petlinsky are scammers’

In an interview with The Telegraph, Petlinsky admitted that Marsalek had bought the RSB Group but said that they “used it just once and then put it into bankruptcy”.

When it was pointed out that since 2022 they have been widely sanctioned by European countries such as the UK, including for training Russian troops to fight in Ukraine, he said tWestern intelligence was “absolutely s---”.

When approached by The Telegraph, the RSB Group said that “two scammers, Jan Marsalek and Stas Petlinsky, created a fake company and used our good name. They introduced themselves to the RSB Group and did their dirty deeds”.

A spokesman added: “Because of these scams, we have been sanctioned. We always work within the law, and we have carried out humanitarian mine clearance in Libya and other countries. But then the RSB Group came to Libya, which was fake and ruined our image.”

It did not respond to further questions about its involvement in mine-clearing in Libya or contracts in Sudan.