THE HAGUE — Spying no longer always requires a spy.

Foreign intelligence services like those of Russia or Iran are increasingly recruiting ordinary European citizens to carry out espionage and sabotage, according to Youssef Ait Daoud, director of intelligence and national threats at the Netherlands’ National Investigations and Special Operations unit.

The shift means authorities are now chasing otherwise unremarkable civilians — often recruited online with promises of money or just the thrill of the mission — rather than professional intelligence officers.

“It’s not as if there’s a note saying, ‘Greetings from Russia’ or ‘Greetings from Iran,’” Ait Daoud said. “Sometimes it’s simply: ‘Do you want to set fire to something for €5,000?’”

Ait Daoud’s warning comes against a backdrop of vandalism, espionage, sabotage and disinformation that has been described as a campaign of attacks carried out by the Kremlin to weaken Europe.

While Russia’s meddling predates the full-scale invasion of Ukraine — in 2018, the Netherlands expelled four Russian military intelligence agents for trying to hack the international chemicals watchdog, for instance — the pace and scale of activity has accelerated in the four years since the beginning of the war.

Ait Daoud leads a newly created police team tasked with enforcing the Netherlands’ expanded anti-espionage law, which makes it a crime to pass information or objects to foreign governments even when they don’t concern state secrets.

He said the growing use of civilian recruits reflects a broader shift in how foreign intelligence services conduct operations — one that complicates efforts to counter their activities.

“Until recently, you mainly saw intelligence services themselves carrying out actions,” he added. “What we see now is that citizens, for payment, for adventure, or for some other reason, are lending themselves for such tasks.”

He described it as “crime as a service.”

Intelligence agencies across Europe have begun warning their citizens about the risk of recruitment. In Germany, authorities in September launched a media campaign cautioning citizens against becoming “disposable agents.”

The Netherlands has gone a step further, tightening its law and creating Ait Daoud’s unit to enforce it. Foreign governments may think twice before meddling “because now there may be an entire team working to stop you,” he said.

Russia tends to draw the most attention when it comes to foreign interference in Europe, but intelligence agencies also consistently warn about threats from China and Iran.

When it comes to transnational repression — governments targeting dissidents and diaspora communities abroad — the list of countries involved is even longer.

For security reasons, Ait Daoud declined to say how large the new police team is, revealing only that it includes a dedicated cyber unit.

Fighting foreign interference is less straightforward than combating terrorism, said Ait Daoud, who spent three years at the National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism before taking on his new role.

“If someone wants to commit a terrorist act, they usually are ideologically motivated,” he said. “They move around in those circles, talk a certain way, are looking for explosives or firearms. All of that is visible.”

Intelligence operations, by contrast, take place in a “gray zone between war and peace,” he said, much of it online. Intelligence and media reports point to Telegram, a messaging platform popular in Russia, as a key recruitment tool.

In a high-profile case in September, Ait Daoud’s team was involved in the arrest of three 17-year-olds in connection with what prosecutors say was a Russian-directed plot.

The teenagers are suspected of trying to map internet traffic around key sites in The Hague using a device known as a “Wi-Fi sniffer,” allegedly on orders from a Russian state-linked hacking group. According to Dutch media, targets included the Canadian embassy and the offices of Europol and Eurojust.

Ait Daoud declined to comment on the case directly, but said it illustrates a broader concern: that many of the people carrying out such operations are “not necessarily hardened criminals or professional spies.”

He added that young people between the ages of 12 and 20 are “overrepresented” in crimes such as drug trafficking and terrorism, but referred to a study that suggests suspects in Russian hybrid warfare plots are often older, typically in their thirties.

Another challenge for investigators is gathering enough evidence to secure a conviction. Under the Netherlands’ new espionage law, prosecutors must prove a suspect knowingly acted on behalf of a foreign state.

That hurdle was highlighted this week when a Dutch court sentenced an employee of the country’s counterterrorism agency to 20 months in prison for taking state documents.

The ruling was a blow to prosecutors, who had argued the man had secretly been spying for Morocco and had sought a 12-year sentence in what would have been the first major conviction under the new law.