Bulgarian spies sentenced in UK court for wide-scale Russian intelligence operations PHOTO

A jury at London’s Old Bailey court on March 7 convicted Bulgarian nationals Katrin Ivanova, 43, Vanya Gaberova, 30, and Tihomir Ivanchev, 39, of espionage on behalf of Russia, with authorities describing their operations as being “on an industrial scale.”

The trio participated in a series of covert surveillance and intelligence operations spanning three years, during which one of their leaders referred to them as “the Minions,” a nod to the yellow sidekicks from the Despicable Me movies who work for the villainous GRU, Caliber.Az reports, citing British media.

The three defendants, who were employed by the Russian military intelligence agency GRU, now face potential prison sentences of up to 14 years when they are sentenced in May, alongside three other Bulgarian members of the same spy network.

Their leader, Orlin Roussev, 47, and deputy Biser Dzhambazov, 43, along with co-conspirator Ivan Stoyanov, had pleaded guilty to espionage prior to the trial. Roussev reportedly received over 200,000 euros ($217,000) to fund the operation.

The operation’s mastermind was Jan Marsalek, 44, an Austrian businessman and alleged Russian agent who is wanted by Interpol following the collapse of the German payment processing company Wirecard. Marsalek, whose whereabouts are unknown but are believed to be in Russia, acted as the liaison between Russian intelligence and the spy ring, directing them to carry out six major operations across the UK, Austria, Spain, Germany, and Montenegro until their arrest in 2023.

“This was spying on an almost industrial scale, on behalf of Russia, the Russian state, and Russian intelligence services,” stated Commander Dominic Murphy, head of the London police’s Counter Terrorism Command.

The espionage activities included surveillance of Ukrainian soldiers being trained at a US base in Germany, to track their movements on the battlefield after Russia’s invasion in 2022. Another operation targeted journalist Christo Grozev of Bellingcat, who had led investigations into the 2018 poisoning of Russian agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England, with plans to kidnap or kill him. Other targets included Russian dissidents and figures such as Roman Dobrokhotov, editor-in-chief of The Insider, Bergey Ryskaliyev, a former Kazakh politician, and Kiril Kachur, a Russian opposition figure.

The group also discussed using drones to drop fake pig’s blood on the Kazakhstan Embassy in London as part of a fabricated protest to gain favour with Kazakh spies.

In a raid on Roussev’s operation centre in Great Yarmouth, police uncovered highly sophisticated spyware, hidden in everyday items such as a rock, men’s ties, a Coke bottle, and even a Minions toy. “These were really sophisticated devices – the kind of thing you’d expect to see in a spy novel,” Murphy noted.

Dzhambazov, who claimed to be an Interpol officer while working for a medical courier company, was in a relationship with two of the other defendants: Ivanova, his laboratory assistant partner, and Gaberova, a beautician. Dzhambazov even took Gaberova to Michelin-starred restaurants and five-star hotels, while she had left Ivanchev for him. During the police raid in February 2023, Dzhambazov was found in bed with Gaberova, rather than with his partner Ivanova.

Both women later testified that they had been manipulated and deceived by Dzhambazov during the trial.

By Tamilla Hasanova