A Kremlin agent who ran a spy ring in the UK is said to have “manipulated” an employee of the National Crime Agency, a force comparable to the US FBI, to carry out espionage activities ordered by Moscow. Three Bulgarian citizens and an Austrian secret agent are also part of the plot.
The latest expulsion of British diplomats shows that the UK can now be considered “public enemy number one” in Russia, Moscow correspondent Ivor Bennett told Sky News. Following the recent rapprochement between the US and Russia, the UK is now one of Russia’s most prominent adversaries on the global stage. Under Donald Trump, the US has moved significantly closer to Moscow and has at times echoed the Kremlin’s criticism of Ukraine. The expulsions of diplomats reflect the new position in which the UK finds itself, Bennett explains.
“It is important to say that this is not the first time that British diplomats have been expelled from Russia. This is the third expulsion we have seen in the last six months and it comes after three Bulgarian nationals were convicted in the UK last week of spying for Russia. We can see today’s situation as a response to that,” Bennett said, adding that the whole incident was designed to create a spectacle. It serves a purpose. That purpose is to portray Britain, and Europe in general, as the enemy attacking Russia.
EXPULSION OF DIPLOMATS
A Kremlin agent who ran a spy ring in the UK is said to have “manipulated” an employee of the National Crime Agency, a force comparable to the US FBI, to carry out espionage activities ordered by Moscow. Three Bulgarian citizens and an Austrian secret agent are also part of the intrigue. A sign that Russian intelligence activity is extremely deep-rooted and active in Europe.
It is no coincidence that the Kremlin announced, just this morning, the expulsion of two diplomats suspected of being undercover British spies from the FSB, the Russian secret service that took over from the KGB. According to The Telegraph, the British FBI employee is implicated in espionage activities linked to Jan Marsalek, a Kremlin agent who ran a spy ring operating in the United Kingdom under the guise of a trusted businessman. He was the head of Wirecard.
LONDON’S “BULGARIAN SPIES”
These details about the Russian spy ring were revealed by one of the “Bulgarian spies” recruited by the Russians and who answered to Orlin Roussev, the head of the network, who in the period 2020-2023 had surveilled, among others, journalists, a former politician and a German military base. According to British intelligence, Marsalek had already used a network of informants to obtain secrets about intelligence activities and foreign policy issues in Egypt, Israel and the United States.
The aim was to find out who was connected to or featured in the reports of the “main foreign services”. Information that has a dual purpose: to identify potential spies and to ensure that the infiltrated spies have not ended up under the counterintelligence target. British 007s fear that the “espionage network” could extend to and from other countries.
NETWORK EXTENSION
In this network of informants, in fact, the name of an Austrian secret agent, Egisto Ott, appears, accused of having “illegally” searched for information about a woman, allegedly a Russian spy, who had an affair with a parliamentarian, in the databases of the Austrian secret police (BVT). The breach of the Austrian intelligence apparatus had already been reported in 2024.
The Austrian secret agent had sought confirmation of the oligarch’s presence in the Russians’ footage as early as 2017, linking it to the search conducted by the British National Crime Agency agent.
The Austrian and English agents “had been known for some time to be working together in an official capacity”. The line of demands activated by Marsalek would thus have led some “foreign authorities” to “act indirectly in the interests of Russia”. A well-founded lead, since Ott, the Austrian agent, was suspended after warnings from the CIA and MI6 that he was considered a “mole” in the service of the Kremlin.
