Russians Working in Secret for Ukraine: Rare Accounts from Inside the Shadow War

Two Russian men have given rare accounts of secretly working for Ukraine's intelligence services from inside Russia. Their descriptions of activities targeting military assets and personnel in their own country paint an unusual picture of the war's shadow world.

One of the men, referred to as Ivan, claims to have played a role from within Russia in Ukrainian drone attacks on strategic bombers and munitions factories on his home soil. He features in a BBC World Service documentary about the shadowy world of Russian saboteurs.

The documentary, by independent Polish journalist Marcin Mamon, also features a man referred to as Foma, a Russian living in exile in Poland. Foma says he runs a network of undercover volunteers inside Russia.

According to Foma, his network surveils high-level officers whom the GUR — Ukraine's military intelligence service — is considering targeting. He stresses that they are never involved in the attacks themselves; their role is only to pass on intelligence.

Foma was initially tight-lipped about whom they were surveilling. But after Lt Gen Fanil Sarvarov was assassinated in Moscow last December, Foma admitted he had provided the Ukrainians with intelligence on him. Sarvarov was killed by an explosive device hidden under his car.

The GUR has confirmed that both Ivan and Foma work for the agency. But it has also acknowledged that it cannot know the full picture. When Ivan's handler was pressed on whether he could be trusted, the handler replied: "I'm not sure of anyone, except myself."

Both the GUR and the men are cautious about how much detail they share, making it impossible to verify the activities the men claim to have carried out. The broad tactics they describe, however, have been acknowledged by the Ukrainian authorities: Kyiv has spoken of coordinated drone attacks on what it claims are legitimate targets inside Russia, and has acknowledged using secret agents for this.

There have also been several political assassinations in Russia since the start of the war. As a matter of policy, Ukraine never officially admits responsibility for targeted attacks, though a Ukrainian intelligence officer previously admitted to the BBC that it was behind the killing of senior military figure Lt Gen Igor Kirillov in December 2024.

It is difficult to confirm how many Russians are doing this kind of work for Ukraine. According to Foma, they number about 300 to 500, though this too is impossible to verify. Both men say they are opposed not just to Russia's war in Ukraine but to President Vladimir Putin's regime, and believe his political future depends on the war's outcome. In Ivan's words: "I think the regime might fall if they lose the war… Through our actions, we are trying to speed this up."

Ivan said his work involved surveilling military sites and locating places to hide drone components, in preparation for potential attacks on Russian assets. "When these components are combined, it turns out a formidable weapon, which with a single blow can destroy an object that costs many, many millions of dollars," he said. He sent Mamon a video apparently showing him hiding explosives near a Russian military airfield. If he had been caught, he would have been charged with terrorism and jailed for decades.

Foma's work is different — he operates remotely, training his volunteers in Russia online. Mamon watched one such tutorial, on how to trail a senior military official marked for surveillance. Foma told his volunteers they would receive a file with the target's photo, date of birth, age, description and car details, and instructed them not to take a phone when approaching the target.

Foma said there were about three dozen people in his network split between Russia, Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe, with those outside Russia providing logistical support such as tracking targets' digital footprints. He said the GUR suggests the targets, but his team checks for themselves whether those individuals should be considered military criminals. His argument: "I want people who do terrible things on behalf of Putin and Russia in Ukraine to understand that they'll have to pay for it. I want them to get scared."

For Ivan, the risk was direct. He said the most serious case was when his car was stopped for inspection while he was carrying handmade explosives: the risk was very high, but he was not detected. To reduce the risk of being compromised, he said, there is no clear structure to the work; he has never met and does not know the identity of others he has worked alongside.

After checking with his contacts, Mamon thought it likely that Ivan had been involved in a plan to strike Russia's largest military drone factory at Yelabuga in June last year, an incident in which one person was reported killed. Ivan stressed that the aim is always to try to avoid harming civilians. Questions remain about how he managed to frequently leave Russia and return; he told Mamon that in a third country he met Ukrainian agents and underwent lie detector tests.

The two men's accounts expose a dark side of the war, in which citizens inside one country work for the intelligence service of its adversary. Yet how much of their claims is true cannot be independently verified — and, as the GUR handler's own words make clear, in this shadow world no one is fully trusted.