Friday, three Bulgarian nationals based in Great Britain were sentenced by a London jury Spy for Russia On what the prosecutors have said, it is “an industrial scale”.
The trio was accused of putting lives in danger while they acted on orders in the name of Russian information to carry out surveillance across Europe between 2020 and 2023.
Katrin Ivanova, 33, Vanya Gaberova, 30, and Tihomir Ivanov Ivanchev, 39, were sentenced on Friday at the London Central Criminal Tribunal after a trial that started in November.
The three, who were tangled in sex with one of their managers or of each other, denied being on the conspiracy and said they did not know for whom they worked or were lied by their superiors.
Metropolitan police via Reuters
Their plans were presented in thousands of messages exchanged between the leaders of the cell and recovered by the police, The BBC reported. The messages included plots to kidnap and kill some of the group targets as well as plans to trap them in so -called “honeytrap” novels.
Prosecutors said they had an American air base in Germany where Ukrainian troops have trained and discussed the kidnapping or death of Russian state opponents.
They would also have tried to attract a Bulgarian journalist who discovered the involvement of Moscow in 2018 Novichok Poisoning of a former Russian spy in Salisbury, England, in “honey” with Gaberova.
The leaders discussed flying and killing the journalist of Bellingcat, Christo Grozev, or to remove it and take him to Russia, the prosecutors said.
The espionage cell had other jobs – Gaberova was an esthetician, Ivanchev, a painter and Roussev, was at some point the director of technology for a financial company in London, the BBC reported.
Metropolitan police via Reuters
The police survey revealed 221 mobile phones, 495 SIM cards, 11 drones and devices to extract data from phones and listening to Wi-Fi activity, BBC reported.
The spying ring also included two other defendants, the leader Orlin Roussev and his sink Dzhambazov. They have previously pleaded guilty of espionage accusations and to have false identity documents.
Roussev, 47, was led by the Russian agent allegedly Jan Marsalek, an Austrian national, who was in contact with Russian intelligence agencies, prosecutors said.
Dzhambazov and Ivanova lived together as a couple and worked in health jobs, BBC reported, but Dzhambazov was also related to Gaberova. The two were found together in bed when the police arrested – and Ivanchev had separated a relationship with her in the past, according to the BBC.
