Six Bulgarian citizens convicted in Britain of spying for Russia
Six Bulgarian citizens have been sentenced to prison in the United Kingdom on charges of participating in a Russian spy network, Bloomberg reports.
The longest sentence – 10 years and 8 months – went to Orlin Rusev, who was found guilty of "significant planning over a long period of time" and boasted of having an "Indiana Jones garage" of high-end surveillance equipment. The other defendants received sentences ranging from 5 to 10 years.
Rusev, along with his associates Bizer Dzhambazov and Ivan Iliev Stoyanov, pleaded guilty to espionage. The latter two were sentenced to approximately 10 and 5 years, respectively.
The group led by Rusev received instructions from former Austrian businessman Jan Marsalek, who fled to Russia in 2020 and works for the aggressor country's intelligence services. Prosecutors have established that Marsalek sent Rusev "thousands of messages" via the Telegram messenger and financed the operations. At the same time, the former businessman himself is not a defendant in the case.
"Massive communication data" between Roussev and Marsalek was found, as well as evidence of cryptocurrency payments from the Austrian.
"The defendants were motivated by money," the judge noted.
- Among the operations of this spy group was an attempt to steal the mobile phone numbers of Ukrainian soldiers who were undergoing training at an American base in Stuttgart, Germany.
- The network also monitored Bulgarian investigative journalist Hristo Grozev (more details here).