Russia refused to pay arsonists who carried out a £1 million attack in the UK because the blaze wasn’t up to the Wagner Group’s ‘standards’, a court has heard.
The terrorist group conducting a sabotage campaign on behalf of Russian intelligence allegedly recruited a group of British men to set fire to a warehouse in Leyton, East London, destroying over £100,000 worth of equipment, including generators and vital satellite equipment destined for Ukraine.
Today the Old Bailey heard that while the ringleader Dylan Earl, 20, had grand plans to do ‘something big’ for the Kremlin, boasting he could build ‘a link’ between the Wagner Group, IRA and notorious Kinahan crime cartel, his first mission failed to impress Russian handlers.
Days before the blaze, a Wagner Group operative told Earl to watch a Cold War drama about KGB spies as a ‘manual’ for his mission, it was said.
The Wagner contact known only by his Telegram handle ‘Privet Bot’ recommended watching the television series The Americans, about KGB agents undercover in the US, ‘in order to understand work’.
