The British prosecutor's office announced Thursday the indictment of three men and two women of Bulgarian nationality suspected of spying for Russia. The five suspects, aged between 29 and 45, will be prosecuted for "conspiracy to collect information intended to be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy for an object harming the security and interests of the state" between late August 2020 and February 2023, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said in a statement.
Tense relations between London and Moscow
Orlin Roussev, 45, Bizer Dzhambazov, 41, Katrin Ivanova, 31, Ivan Stoyanov, 31, and Vanya Gaberova, 29, will be arraigned next Tuesday at Westminster Magistrates' Court in London. The first three had already been charged on 11 February with possession of dozens of false identity documents. The UK is one of Ukraine's main supporters of the Russian invasion.
Relations between London and Moscow have continued to strain for two decades, marked in particular by the poisoning on British soil in 2006 of the former agent of the Russian security services Alexander Litvinenko, who died, then in 2018 of the former double agent Sergei Skripal, who survived.
