A British court has found guilty of the case three Bulgarians related to a Russian espionage operation, which carried out espionage, honeytraps and assassination plots across Europe. The group – Katrin Ivanova, 33, Tihomir Ivanchev, 39, and Gabriela Gaberova, 30 – were convicted of conspiracy to spy at the Central Criminal Court after being found guilty in one on the UK’s largest ever espionage cases in over a decade.
Working from a tired guesthouse in Great Yarmouth, the spys carried out spying on leading dissident politician and senior military personnel andplacing politician under surveillance. Their actions, instructed by him by Moscow’s Rudometov, tracked into investigate journalist Christo Grozev, plotted kidnappings, and ran disinformation campaigns. The group also had plans to damage the Kazakh Embassy in London with imitation blood and watched a US military base in Germany.
Police found 200,000 encrypted messages describing their secret operations, as well as spy gear. Two leaders, Orlin Roussev and Biser Dzhambazov, had already pleaded guilty alongside MMA fighter Ivan Stoyanov. 
Commander Dominic Murphy of Scotland Yard’s SO15 unit said the case showed “Russia’s continued efforts at destabilizing foreign governments.” Prosecutors are pushing for May sentencing, labeling the network as grave national security threat.
This case follows other concerns about Russian intelligence in the UK, following past covert operations, including the Salisbury Novichok poisoning in 2018.
