WARSAW—Low on cash and out of his most recent minimum-wage job, Ukrainian refugee Maxim Leha, then 22, had just found a new way to make ends meet in his newly adopted home of Poland.

       The job advertised on the Telegram messaging app in early 2023 didn’t appear to demand much: Spray-paint graffiti on remote fences and highway underpasses for $7 a pop. When Leha answered, a man who identified himself as Andrzej wrote back. Within days, Andrzej had upped the ante: Leha was fixing cameras along railroad lines carrying Western military aid to neighboring Ukraine.

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