Uncovering the Truth: Are Bots and Smuggling Gangs Behind the Ceuta Migrant Crisis, or Is There a Bigger Putin Conspiracy?

AMASSING on the Moroccan border as if from nowhere, some 78,000 desperate migrants began storming the Spanish territory of Ceuta.

Many had come prepared, wearing flippers or rubber rings around their waists, and soon plunged into the sea to .

Soldiers sit in a military vehicle as police officers and soldiers escort migrants to the border Credit: Reuters Police officers direct migrants at El Trampolin beach in Ceuta, Spain Credit: EPA People gather at the site of clashes near Fnideq on the Morocco-Spain border Credit: AFP Experts fear Vladimir Putin could be behind the migrant invasion Credit: Getty

Others clambered through holes hacked in the border fence in what became the in a single day.

Amid the chaos, many were astonished by the attitudes of some of the Moroccan border guards.

Instead of turning them back, they were .

Migrant Mohammed Ahmidho, 47, said the had told them to “come to Spain.”

It sounded more like a slogan from a tourist brochure than a command from a frontier guard.

Another migrant Ajoub el-Arrot, 24, who was alerted to the mass border incursion on social media, told the New York Times: “I don’t know why they let us through.

“Maybe they had some political reason. They opened the border and let everyone go by.

“When there are political problems, Morocco opens the doors and tells us to go.”

The Sun’s Oliver Harvey in Ceuta Credit: Ian Whittaker Migrants outside the overcrowded asylum centre in Ceuta Credit: Ian Whittaker A queue of migrants in the Spanish enclave Credit: Ian Whittaker An unprecedented border crisis hit the Spanish North African enclave of Ceuta Credit: Ian Whittaker

Images of triggered a political earthquake across the EU.

So was there a hidden hand behind this mass breach of EU borders?

Tyrant and other autocrats have long weaponised mass migration as a form of hybrid warfare designed to destabilise European democracies.

Henry Bolton, a former intelligence officer, told The Sun: “There are many indications that Russia or another hostile state may be involved.

“And I say hostile because if a state is behind this sort of movement, it is certainly not benign. It is a hostile act.

“No single piece of evidence proves that the whole operation was orchestrated. But put it all together, and it certainly appears that way.”

What is clear is that the Ceuta flashpoint wasn’t some spontaneous mass gathering at the border – but had been incubated for weeks.

Migrants I spoke to who had crossed into the Spanish exclave said they had been drawn to the frontier by videos on , and saying it had become safer and easier to reach the territory.

A 12-year-old unaccompanied minor who crossed into Spain is escorted by a Spanish soldier Credit: AP African migrants resting on the street in Ceuta Credit: Ian Whittaker The Spanish Army’s ‘Regulares’ infantry forces watch a group of migrants near the border post of the Spanish enclave of Ceuta Credit: AFP Migrants carry a man, who they say was injured during clashes with Spanish cops and soldiers Credit: Reuters

It followed a ruling by Spain’s Supreme Court in July that those who swim to Ceuta could not be fast-tracked back to Morocco.

One Moroccan official said: “The message became just cross, and you will be protected.”

Another migrant called Nabil, who broke into Ceuta on his seventh attempt, said: “If you want to know how to reach Ceuta, TikTok has everything.

“People show you the routes, where to start walking, what time to leave, what to avoid, and even how to deal with the police.

“You don’t need a smuggler to find basic information anymore.”

Spanish researchers found 25 Facebook groups related to the mass Ceuta breach had attracted more than one million views.

The sites tracked coast guard boats, possible entry routes and forecasts.

At the Ceuta border I met Moroccan delivery driver Mohammed Mounsessef, 26, who heeded the calls on social media, and told me: “We look at videos of Europe and it’s very nice.”

Moroccan migrants – including one wearing a rubber ring – evade Spanish police on the coast of Ceuta Credit: Ian Whittaker Burnt out cars at the Moroccan border Credit: Ian Whittaker Members of the Spanish Guardia Civil rescue a migrant Credit: Reuters An estimated 60,000 migrants crossed the border into the Spanish enclave in 24 hours Credit: Ian Whittaker

Moroccan teenager Abde Ellakkoh, 19, swam to the exclave wearing a Three Lions strip with Jude Bellingham’s name emblazoned on his shoulders.

Outside the territory’s centre, he said: “I want to go to England to study and then become a mechanic.”

Yet, amid the chaos, around 100 people perished in the sea water as they pursued their dream of a new life.

This week the north African exclave’s leader Juan Jesús Vivas spoke of his “profound sorrow” over the “irreparable tragedy”.

Spain’s interior minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska blamed the mass crossing on “mafias, human traffickers and people who take advantage of vulnerable people”.

Some have suggested Morocco may have had a hand in the incursion. Afterall, the movement of 78,000 people to the border in a matter of hours would be impossible to go undetected.

And what of the reports of its security personnel apparently ushering migrants across the frontier?

Spanish intelligence services believe that while Morocco didn’t plan the border breach it allowed it to happen. Events then span out of control.

People walk on a beach as they attempt to cross from the Moroccan northern town of Fnideq Credit: AP Migrants gather next to burning cars in Fnideq as they wait for a chance to cross to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta Credit: Reuters Two cars burn during clashes in Fnideq Credit: Reuters

Meanwhile, Western intelligence sources told The Telegraph they believe Morocco may have been using the crisis to signal displeasure with Spain over relations with its neighbour and rival, Algeria. Morocco has denied this assertion.

And what of Russia? Putin is only too aware of how migrants can be used as divisive tools to destabilise Europe.

In 2015, Russia’s indescriminate bombing in Syria helped spark a that saw 1.5m arrive in Europe in that year alone, most via Greece.

Beginning that year, Moscow allowed 5,500 migrants from Middle Eastern countries to travel through Russia and cross into Norway and on bicycles. A further surge occurred across the Finnish border in 2023.

In 2021 Putin and close Ally Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko engineered a migrant crisis on the Polish border.

Refugees were permitted to fly from Iraq, Syria, and Yemen to Belarus, then bussed to the EU border.

So are Putin’s blood-stained fingerprints on the Moroccan breach?

Former intelligence officer Henry Bolton told The Sun: “Russia certainly has the capability to mobilise in Morocco and the surrounding area, the Sahel, the Margreb, Niger, Mali and so on.

“They have the ability to project through social media, they have connections, and their intelligence agencies have connections with organised groups. Irregular Russian private military companies also have a footprint in that region.”

Mr Bolton believes that Putin’s disastrous full-scale invasion of Ukraine – which has hamstrung the Russian economy after four years of fighting – could provide “intent” for any possible involvement in the Ceuta crossing.

He added: “The Russian Federation is under severe pressure in Ukraine. A lot of the reason for that is European support for the Ukrainians.

“Russia has a very long history of trying to distract the supporters of its opponents, redirect diplomatic, political, security, and resource effort from supporters of its opponents by doing this sort of thing.”

If Putin was behind the Ceuta breach, he would have been delighted at the diplomatic rift it caused between EU allies.

Italy suspended its Schengen open borders arrangement with Spain, a move backed by Finland and Denmark.

While the Czech Republic called for Spain’s membership of the Schengen area to be temporarily suspended.

Mr Bolton concluded of the Ceuta breach: “Is it likely that Russia is behind this? I would say it is indeed quite possible.

“The capability is there. The intent to distract European powers is certainly there.

“If I were still working in intelligence, I would absolutely be considering this as one of the primary sources that I would want to investigate as to the initiation, the orchestration, the coordination of the breach of the border in Ceuta.”

What is certain is that tens of thousands of those who risked their necks to make it to the EU were back in Morocco within hours.

The surge – if orchestrated by a state actor – was a heartless exploitation of young lives.

At a hotel on the Moroccan side of the border I met Noor Ammar Lamarty, 28, who had witnessed the Ceuta disaster unfold.

The Madrid-based legal expert said: “They came from all around the country. People walked for eight hours to get here.

“They wanted good and to be properly paid. They swam to Ceuta and left everything behind.

“So many people died. It was ­terrible and terrifying.”