Wie ein 17-jähriger Kanadier zum russischen Spion wurde. Sie nahmen ihm seinen Pass und sein Telefon weg, dann begannen die Drohungen. [translated]

Highlights:

***A clickbait offer on Telegram advertising opportunity to volunteer with a humanitarian organization; then the demands of cooperation, followed by threats – this is how a young Canadian fell into FSB’s trap. This article explains how 17-year-old Laken P. became a spy for Russia and ended up in front of a judge in Warsaw.***

*In short, the 17-year-old from Canada was convinced that he had found a volunteer opportunity [to help Ukraine]. What awaited him, instead, were meetings with the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) agents, operational instructions, and intelligence-gathering tasks. In the end, he couldn’t take it anymore: he fled to Poland, got drunk in a Warsaw hotel, and greeted the police with the shocking confession, ”I am a Russian spy, I want to surrender myself to authorities.”*

***Creating false cover as an “international traveler”, payments in cryptocurrency, and contact via Telegram: Methods of Russian Spy Agency.***

*It all began innocently enough: A young Canadian wanted to volunteer and help Ukraine. On one of Russian Telegram channels, he found an ad by a humanitarian aid organization [to Ukraine], operating also in Russia. He discussed the details and arrived at the specified address in a Ukrainian city. However, he did not travel there directly: as instructed, he first went to Turkey, then to Russia, and finally to Ukraine.*

*There, he was visited by FSB officers. They took away his passport and his cell phone, and they began to threaten him: he would be killed if he didn’t follow their orders. They let him know they knew everything about his family. But if he obeyed, they told him, they would provide him with a place to live, a salary, Russian citizenship even.*

*Fearing for his life, the 17-year-old agreed. First, he was told to destroy his passport and leave for a northern European country (again, via indirect itinerary). Once there, he was to apply for a new passport at the Canadian consulate (so that a new passport was “laundered” of Russian visa stamps and any trace of his visit to Russia). In order to create his cover, he was to travel around the world in order to make an image of the international globetrotter believable.*

*He was given some “crypto” funds and $1,800 in cash for travel and other expenses. He kept in touch with his FSB handler at all times via Telegram (the prosecutor’s office [in Poland] was able to determine his code name later on). While in Europe, he was going to be tasked with taking pictures of designated targets; but the ultimate goal was for Laken P. to go back to Ukraine and enlist in Ukrainian army.*

*The teenager wanted to stay in Russia. As established by Polish investigators and ABW [Agencja Bezpieczeństwa Wewnętrznego-The Internal Security Agency], he even recorded a video on his phone addressed to the pro-Russian Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov with an appeal to let him join the Akhmat unit. He was reluctant to return to Canada fearing that someone would discover his “Russian episode”.*

***Laken P. got drunk and had a nervous break down in a Warsaw hotel.***

*The 17-year-old followed the instructions of FSB agents and traveled to one of the countries in northern Europe where he reported the loss of his passport at the consulate. However, the wait for the new document was getting long, and with traveling and daily living being expensive, he ran out of money. Towards the end of his stay there, he slept in the street.*

*Then he decided to travel to Poland, and his handlers approved. In May of 2024, he flew to Warsaw. Two days later, after police were called to the hotel because of the disturbance, heavily intoxicated Laken confessed that he was a “Russian spy”, and surrendered to Polish authorities.*

[His sentence, *TVPWorld*](https://tvpworld.com/84455136/canadian-teen-who-spied-for-russia-gets-lenient-sentence-from-warsaw-court).

*This story is a warning to all young people who, in pursuit of adventure, might find themselves in a dangerous situation with no way out.*

***Russian Telegram app was also used by the FSB to recruit 16 spies (Ukrainians and Belarusians), detained by Polish Security Service in 2023 and convicted a year later.***

*The group followed the instructions via Telegram from an “Andriej”, and their tasks ranged from monitoring international airports in Gdynia [a Baltic port] and Rzeszów-Jasionka [a key transit hub for foreign military aid to the Ukraine], Rzeszów railway station, and border crossings to Ukraine. They were planning to blow up trains, and even carry out killings.*

*There are many similarities between the Canadian teenager’s case and the spy group apprehended in Poland: recruitment and communication using Telegram messaging app, type of “assignments”, payment in cryptocurrencies. Russian agents use psychology to target and gain trust of young vulnerable people using online platforms, often offering “easy money” jobs that seem mundane and innocuous at first. “That’s why the public must be warned: although the types of incentives and targeted populations are changing, the way Russian spy agencies operate stays the same”, emphasized Col. Wojciech Skrzypek, the prosecutor from the Mazovian Department of Organized Crime and Corruption with the National Prosecutor’s Office in Warsaw.*