A former taxi driver is at the centre of Russia's shadow war across Europe

The plots, say Western security officials, are part of a shadow war by Russia's intelligence services. An arson attack that destroyed more than 1,000 businesses outside Warsaw.

Another that burned an IKEA in Lithuania. A plan to put incendiary devices on cargo planes in Britain, Germany and Poland. But a key figure in these plots, the officials say, is not an intelligence operative. He is a former taxi driver who lives in Russian farm country.Aleksei Vladimirovich Kolosovsky, 42, who has ties to criminal groups involved in hacking, selling fake IDs and car theft, has made himself an essential player in this new form of unconventional conflict.

With the help of Russian intelligence, he has overseen the execution of recent plots in Poland, Lithuania, Britain, Germany and perhaps elsewhere, according to court documents and interviews with more than a dozen security officials from five European nations.Kolosovsky's role is a novel one, said the security officials. He is not a trained officer or an asset embedded in a foreign govt. He is more of a service provider, the officials said, working closely with intelligence officers - most of them from the GRU, Russia's military intelligence service, which has primary responsibility for sabotage operations.

Operatives like Kolosovsky have become more common in the Kremlin's evolving and increasingly violent sabotage campaign.Kolosovsky, they said, brings to the fight an extensive network of criminals who know how to move goods and people without drawing the attention of law enforcement. Most important, these contacts reside and can travel in Europe, something that has become increasingly difficult for Russia's professional intelligence officers."We

are now operating in a space between peace and war," Blaise Metreweli, who leads Britain's spy agency, known as MI6, said in a speech.

"Russia is testing us in the gray zone with tactics that are just below the threshold of war."Kolosovsky first came to the attention of Western intelligence services after a pair of arson attacks in May 2024, two of the security officials said. Using an account on the messaging service Telegram, under variations of the name "Warrior," he recruited a web of agents, including a Ukrainian teenager, to plan attacks, according to the officials, as well as court records.

In 2021, Mr. Kolosovsky was briefly detained by the Russian authorities, though it is not clear why.The services provided by Kolosovsky are a matter of necessity for Russia. Since the invasion of Ukraine, more than 750 Russian diplomats have been expelled from Europe, "the great majority of them spies," Ken McCallum, the head of the British domestic security agency MI5, said in 2024.Nothing about Kolosovsky's public profile suggests a life of secret intrigue. He appears to live modestly. His last post on one account was in on Dec 15, 2020, his birthday. It featured a photo with his mother.