Dangerous spy network in Britain passed secrets to Russia for three years – media

For almost three years, a «sophisticated» spy network based in the UK passed secrets to Russia and gathered information on targets across Europe, a court has heard. The Guardian writes about this.

Three Bulgarian citizens: 33-year-old Katrin Ivanova, 30-year-old Vanya Gaberova and 39-year-old Tikhomir Ivanov Ivanchev, allegedly conducted surveillance of persons and places of interest to Russia.

Alison Morgan, who opened the case on behalf of the prosecution on Thursday, November 28, said: «For almost three years they tried to collect information in favor of Russia, the enemy of Great Britain, information about various targets, both about people and about physical objects. The information was of particular interest to the Russian state. Their activities caused clear and imminent harm to the security and interests of the United Kingdom».

️She said of the defendants' alleged activities: «It was high-risk and very complex. The defendants earned significant sums of money from what they did. None of them did this activity blindly».

️The defendants allegedly worked with a number of other people who spied for Russia between 2020 and 2023 in London, Vienna, Valencia, Montenegro and Stuttgart. The spy group included two other defendants, Orlin Rusev and Biser Dzhambazov, who pleaded guilty to espionage, according to the Old Bailey materials.

️According to Morgan, the defendants, together with Russian agent Jan Marsalek, known as ’am «pert Titz» and an Austrian citizen, planned to obtain materials useful to Russia. They were tasked with spying on prominent people of obvious interest to Russia, she said, often because they were dissidents who had left their homeland for their own safety.

It was alleged that this was a series of actions, including following people, finding out their whereabouts and then informing the Russian state.

The court was told that there was an exchange of messages between Marsalek and Rusev in which they discussed «options» related to Bulgarian journalist Hristo Grozev, who is investigating Russia for Bellingcat, an award-winning group of journalistic investigations.

These options allegedly included surveillance, kidnapping and transporting Grozev to Moscow, assassination, and infiltration of Bellingcat.