41. Putin’s Minions: How Russia Spies (Ep 1)

Summary

The Rest Is Classified: Episode 41 - "Putin’s Minions: How Russia Spies (Ep 1)"

Release Date: April 27, 2025
Hosts: David McCloskey & Gordon Corera
Podcast Description: Delving into the clandestine realms of spies, espionage, and covert operations, hosted by former CIA analyst David McCloskey and veteran security correspondent Gordon Corera. This episode uncovers the intricacies of a Bulgarian spy ring operating in the UK on behalf of Russia.

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1. Setting the Scene: An Unconventional Spy Ring

The episode opens with the hosts drawing a parallel between the whimsical world of the Minions from the "Despicable Me" franchise and the real-life Bulgarian spies dubbed "Minions" by their Russian handlers.

• David McCloskey [00:01]: Uses a playful introduction referencing the "Minions" to capture listener interest.

• Gordon Corera [02:16]: Introduces the core narrative—"a group of Bulgarians found guilty of spying for Russia in Britain," highlighting the blend of serious espionage with almost comical elements reminiscent of spy films.

2. The Operative Hub: Great Yarmouth’s Fading Hotel

The hub of the spy ring is established in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, housed within an aging Victorian hotel. This location serves as a covert base of operations, mirroring the eclectic and somewhat disorganized nature of the spy group.

• Gordon Corera [05:49]: Describes the setting: "a fading Victorian building on this beach resort," juxtaposing historical charm with clandestine activities.

• David McCloskey [10:25]: Compares the spy base to a chaotic blend of an Indiana Jones warehouse and a ransacked Best Buy, emphasizing the disarray and improvised nature of their operations.

3. Meet the Minions: The Cast of Characters

The spy ring comprises several key members, each with distinct backgrounds and peculiarities that add layers to their espionage activities.

• Orlin Rusev [06:34 - 09:07]: The leader, an engineer with a penchant for spy gadgets, likened to fictional characters like Q from James Bond or Dr. Nefario from "Despicable Me."

  • David McCloskey [09:07]: "He's Bond, or he's Q in the Bond franchise. But in reality, he's a guy like Nefario..."

• Bissa Zambazov [10:58 - 11:10]: Rusev’s main assistant, orchestrating operations and managing communications, adding a layer of complexity with his personal entanglements.

• Katrine Ivanova & Vanya Gaborova [11:05 - 13:44]: Partners in espionage and personal lives, with Gaborova being a renowned beautician specializing in "Russian Volume lash extensions" and Ivanchev, a former championship swimmer turned painter decorator, adding unexpected diversity to the group.

• Ivan Stoyanov [15:56]: Known as "The Destroyer," a mixed martial artist whose tough persona and combat skills bring physical prowess to the team.

4. Covert Operations: Espionage Tactics and Objectives

The Minions orchestrated six key operations across Europe, targeting influential figures and sensitive military sites to advance Russian interests.

• Targeting Journalists:

  • Christo Grozev [21:44 - 24:28]: A Bulgarian investigative journalist with Bellingcat, Grozev has been under intense surveillance with plans hinted at his potential kidnapping or assassination.

    • Gordon Corera [22:24]: "Putin seriously hates him," underscoring the personal vendetta behind the surveillance.

  • Roman Dobrikhotov [24:58 - 27:36]: Another journalist whose targeted surveillance involved corrupt airline workers attempting to extract sensitive information, indicating sophisticated infiltration methods.

• Military Espionage:

  • Patch Barracks Operation [30:00 - 34:11]: An elaborate plan to infiltrate a US military base in Stuttgart using an IMSI grabber—a device to intercept and identify mobile phone signals. This operation aimed to compromise Ukrainian air defense capabilities, showcasing the dire potential impacts on the Ukraine conflict.

    • David McCloskey [33:28]: "They’re using minions. But it’s a pretty sophisticated, pretty nefarious plot," highlighting the blend of rudimentary methods with high-stakes objectives.

• Kazakhstan Operations [28:30 - 30:28]: Attempts to destabilize political relations through fake demonstrations and deepfake videos, reflecting the psychological and information warfare strategies employed.

5. The Crumbling Facade: Personal Lives and Internal Struggles

Behind the espionage façade, the Minions grapple with tangled personal relationships and flawed operational planning, adding a layer of human complexity to their covert activities.

• Gordon Corera [12:53]: "He went for brain cancer," referring to Zambazov’s extreme tactic to cover his espionage activities, illustrating the lengths members go to maintain their covers.

• David McCloskey [16:25]: "They’re all sleeping with each other," points to the dysfunctional dynamics within the group, potentially undermining their missions.

6. The Sting and Aftermath: Arrests and Unanswered Questions

As the Minions prepared to execute their most significant operation at Patch Barracks, British authorities intervened, leading to their arrest. The episode teases unresolved elements regarding how the spies were apprehended and hints at deeper layers within the organization.

• David McCloskey [35:21]: "They are arrested just as they're planning to go out to Stuttgart," raises questions about prior surveillance and intelligence operations against the spy ring.

• Gordon Corera [35:39]: Discusses the mystery surrounding the immediate arrests, setting the stage for further exploration in subsequent episodes.

7. Looking Ahead: The Shadow Mastermind

The episode concludes with a promise to delve deeper into the leadership and strategic planning behind the spy ring, hinting at a "mastermind" orchestrating these operations from Moscow.

• David McCloskey [36:23]: "Next time we'll resume and we'll look at who's running this operation."

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Gordon Corera [02:54]:
  "It's got a rich array of characters from a kind of nefarious baddie who could be, like, from a spy film or even a kind of Scooby Doo film."

• David McCloskey [05:17]:
  "But underlying all of it is a very serious effort by the Russians to rebuild... spy networks in Europe."

• David McCloskey [09:07]:
  "But in reality, he's a guy like Nefario who builds a fart gun for Gru..."

• Gordon Corera [13:44]:
  "Everybody needs Gabor over in her life. She is stunning too."

• David McCloskey [22:24]:
  "The Kremlin’s not a fan."

• Gordon Corera [24:28]:
  "Christo, by background, Bulgaria. As I said, interesting background..."

• David McCloskey [33:28]:
  "They’re using minions. But it’s a pretty sophisticated, pretty nefarious plot."

• David McCloskey [35:21]:
  "They are arrested just as they're planning to go out to Stuttgart."

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Insights and Conclusions

• Blend of Fiction and Reality: The comparison of the Minions spy ring to fictional characters underscores the often absurd and theatrical nature of real-world espionage, where grand plans and personal quirks intersect.

• Evolving Russian Espionage Tactics: The spy ring’s operations highlight a modern approach to espionage, combining traditional surveillance with digital interception tools, reflecting Russia’s adaptability and persistence in rebuilding intelligence networks amidst global tensions.

• Human Element in Espionage: The personal lives and flawed interpersonal dynamics of the Minions reveal the human vulnerabilities within spy operations, potentially impacting mission effectiveness and operational security.

• Global Implications: The attempted infiltration of military bases and targeting of investigative journalists demonstrate the far-reaching consequences of espionage activities, affecting geopolitical stability and security protocols across Europe.

• Ongoing Narrative: The episode sets up a compelling narrative arc, with unresolved questions about the internal hierarchy and ultimate objectives of the spy ring, encouraging listeners to anticipate future episodes for a deeper understanding.

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Next Episode Tease: David and Gordon promise to uncover the identity and motives of the mastermind orchestrating the Minions’ operations from Moscow, delving into the strategic depths of Russian espionage.

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For those fascinated by the intricate dance of spies and the blurred lines between fiction and reality, Episode 41 of "The Rest Is Classified" offers a gripping exploration into the shadowy world of Russian espionage within the UK.

Transcript

[David McCloskey]

This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. Not everyone is careful with your personal information, which might explain why there's a victim of identity theft every five seconds in the U.S. fortunately, there's LifeLock. LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity. If your identity is stolen, a US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year by visiting lifelock.com podcast Terms apply. Minions. Minions have been on this planet far longer than we have. They go by many names. Dave, Carl, Paul, Mike. They're all different, but they all share the same goal. To serve the most despicable master they could find. Making their master happy was the tribe's very reason for existence. That's not to say, though, that they didn't have other passions. Well, welcome to the Rest is classified. I'm David McCloskey.

[Gordon Carrera]

And I'm Gordon Carrera.

[David McCloskey]

And dear listeners, that is a reading from the opening of the wonderfully iconic, culturally significant film the Minions, delivered to all of us in 2015. And Gordon, why in the world did you include a Minions quote to lead off these episodes?

[Gordon Carrera]

Purely because I wanted you to read it. I've just learned I've just spent the last few days doing research for this pod by watching Minions films, which I like to think is true dedication to the craft of our podcast.

[David McCloskey]

That's right. And listeners should be aware that although the next couple episodes that we are going to do are really about spycraft and not about the Minions, I have exclusively binged the Despicable Me franchise, the Minions films. I've gone deep into fan wikis on the Minions. So Gordon will handle the spycraft and I will handle the cultural references, as it were.

[Gordon Carrera]

Spoken like a true former CIA officer. Right? You're going to bluff it. Well, there is a reason why we've started with. There is.

[David McCloskey]

There is. And I will have my revenge for you making me read that quote, by the way.

[Gordon Carrera]

I look forward to it.

[David McCloskey]

Yes, it's coming.

[Gordon Carrera]

What we're actually doing this week, other than talking about the Minions, is we're telling the pretty wild story of a group of Bulgarians who were found guilty of spying for Russia in Britain. Now, it's been in the news in Britain here recently, but I think it does make for a particularly interesting case for anyone out there who is interested in understanding how Russia spies these days and the kinds of people it uses and the wild things they get up to. I think it's got the extremes of the spy world in it. It's fair to say it's got a rich array of characters from a kind of nefarious baddie who could be, like, from a spy film or even a kind of Scooby Doo film or something like that.

[David McCloskey]

Or a villain from the Despicable Me franchise.

[Gordon Carrera]

Exactly.

[David McCloskey]

Come on. You missed an opportunity right out of the gate.

[Gordon Carrera]

Stay within the franchise. That's what he's telling you.

[David McCloskey]

Exactly. Exactly.

[Gordon Carrera]

Come on. So we've got a villainous character who was once one of the most fated businessmen in Europe, and we go from that to beauticians who specialize in eyelashes. We've got exotic locations from Vienna to Valencia, Berlin to Montenegro, but also a pretty cheap, I'm afraid, quite grubby hotel in a British beach resort. And we've got spy gear, Lots of spy gear. Lots of spy gear to come, which is going to be kind of fun. There is a comic element to this, I have to say. As the Minions quote suggests. It does feel a bit closer in my sense to Slow Horses than to Bond in its feel.

[David McCloskey]

It's decidedly not Bond, as we will see.

[Gordon Carrera]

It's decidedly not Bond. It's got that slightly grubby, slightly ridiculous feeling. And most importantly of all, it's got Minions, and we'll come to the Minions, and the reason why we were reading out the Minions quote in time. But it is also a serious story, I guess we should say, because we shouldn't dismiss it as all being comedy, because it is a story about a group of people who were carrying out surveillance which could have been used for kidnap or assassination and for targeting people in Ukraine and for serious, consequential espionage. Even though, as I said, there's a kind of faintly ridiculous air to it.

[David McCloskey]

Yeah, there is kind of a darkly comedic aspect to the whole thing. But it is, as you said, Gordon, I think, a really fascinating case study into exactly how the Russians are spying in Europe today, and in particular in the uk, of course. And you're exactly right that if this group, as we'll see here, had not been apprehended, I think they could have done real damage. So we're, again, in one of these spy stories where, you know, we're going to, in our kind of Russia's classified way, lead into the absurd. But underlying all of it is a very serious effort by the Russians to rebuild, I think, spy networks in Europe that have been really put under a lot of pressure since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. And it really does show, frankly, I think, how clever the Russian services can be and how resourceful they can be if they are trying to a capability to sort of reach out and touch people in Western Europe that they don't like. So very serious kind of, I think.

[Gordon Carrera]

Goals despicable, you could almost say, very.

[David McCloskey]

Despicable goals on the part of the Russians carried out in sort of an absurd spy theater which we're going to just really feast on over the next couple episodes. But Gordon, take us to the, I guess the morning of 8th February 2023 and it is 6am, it's still dark and there are a large herd of police officers getting ready to bring the heat to a group of Bulgarians.

[Gordon Carrera]

That's right, it's dark, it's a cold February morning. The police are waiting at lots of different properties, some in London, but particularly one we're going to look at first, which is in of all places, Great Yarmouth in Norfolk. Now this is quite an odd place, it's fair to say, to be the hub of an international spy ring. It's centered on a fading Victorian building on this beach resort. The kind of place people used to go when they would holiday, I think on the English coast they do that perhaps less than they used to. I don't know what the American equivalent is to this. Somewhere in Jersey, David, maybe Jersey.

[David McCloskey]

When you say used to like, do you mean in the Victorian era or do you mean, okay, that was its.

[Gordon Carrera]

Heyday or maybe the 20s and the 30s.

[David McCloskey]

The 20s and the 30s, yeah.

[Gordon Carrera]

I mean look, it's a lovely place, but it's maybe this hotel, let's put it that way, is perhaps past its prime. It's close to the beach, three stories, 33 rooms, eight bedrooms. It had been a three star hotel. And I'm going to read you from TripAdvisor. Providing an ideal mix of value, comfort and convenience. It offers a family friendly setting with an array of amenities designed for travelers like you.

[David McCloskey]

It's very personal. Yeah.

[Gordon Carrera]

Another review which I struggle to believe is real. Lovely stay. The soundproofing is very good. Hotel seems to attract a diverse international crowd but they seem to keep themselves to themselves some evenings the TV reception seemed to have a lot of interference, but this didn't last.

[David McCloskey]

When was it posted? Was it posted after the arrest?

[Gordon Carrera]

That's what I think. I think someone is having.

[David McCloskey]

It has to be right, someone. Soundproofing, that's it. That is important though, I think, I mean you don't, you don't want to hear the sort of screams and rumbles, you know, of the rooms next door. Is it fair to say that this beach, as I'm picturing it, Gordon, is this the sort of beach that has needles on it, like you have to. You have to wear shoes because there's, you know, there's so much sort of, like, paraphernalia that. That might prick you and infect you?

[Gordon Carrera]

No, no, that is. That is a really. I'm going to stand up for the Norfolk Tourist Board here in the hope of some sponsorship in the future and just say that it is a lovely beach around there and it's a lovely place to go. And that is back to spy base. Because the police are massing at 6am, the Metropolitan Police's Counterterrorist Command, which deals with national security work, is amassing outside. The police burst in through the door. They run in shouting, police, stay where you are. There's great body cam footage of them going in through the door or making their way through these quite chaotic rooms. And they find a man who looks bewildered and he goes, it's the wrong place. He says, stumbling, but clearly in shock. Now, this man is Orlin Rusev and he is the leader on the ground of the spy ring. Now, like all of the group, he is a Bulgarian. Let's just explain who he is a little bit. He had worked in engineering companies in Bulgaria, then he'd moved to the UK around 2009. He set up companies working on secure communications and surveillance tech. So he is an engineer who understands the technical side of how to secure your communications and maybe how to spy on other people's. He's obviously got a little thing about espionage. He uses 007 in one of his email addresses. So he actually liked to think of himself as Q from the James Bond films. And so I think that's one example of how he sees himself, at least.

[David McCloskey]

But in reality, I mean, again, he's Dr. Nefario from the Minions, right? I mean, from the Despicable Me franchise. Now, Rusev is not elderly, but like Dr. Nefario is the sort of elderly, hearing impaired gadgeteer who develops all of these wonderful weapons for Gru and the Minions. So he thinks of himself. He's Bond, or he's Q in the Bond franchise. But in reality, he's a guy like Nefario who builds a fart gun for. For Gru, because he. Gru said to build dart gun and he misheard. Right, because he's hearing impaired, he built the dart gun. He built boogie robots instead of cookie robots.

[Gordon Carrera]

Okay, so Q or.

[David McCloskey]

Yes, or Nefario or Nefario.

[Gordon Carrera]

Ok, but this hotel is as he would put it his Indiana Jones warehouse mixing. Yeah. He's really messing with his films, isn't he? Because I think what he means is that scene, you know, at the. At the end of Raids of the Lost Ark, where they've got all the boxes of stuff. But you're right, he's mixing his films up a little bit too much. Cause either he's Q or he's Indiana. Jon.

[David McCloskey]

It looks like a ransacked Best Buy. It doesn't really look like the Indiana Jones warehouse. It's very neatly stacked and the crates are massive. I mean, this sort of looks like a person on PCP wandered into Best Buy after hours and tore the place up.

[Gordon Carrera]

And you can see that from the body cam footage that there's a ton of stuff littered around. And we'll come back to what that stuff is in the spy gadgetry later. But the key thing is this is his spy base. He's running things and this ring out of this Great Yarmouth former hotel. As the boss, he's getting orders from Russia. We'll come to the mystery figure who's doing that later as the good plot twist there. But the rest of the group are based in London and this is where we're going to get to the Minions. So Rusev is tasking another Bulgarian who's based in London called Bissa Zambazov.

[David McCloskey]

We're going to strain Gordon's Bulgarian pronunciations to the. To the breaking point here. You'll have no help from me, by the way. I will say none of their names. Okay.

[Gordon Carrera]

But I apologize to Mr. Zambazov, who's currently serving at His Majesty's Pleasure.

[David McCloskey]

And all Bulgarians, I think also that's true.

[Gordon Carrera]

So he is the kind of main assistant who Rusev and Great Yarmouth is tasking Rusev in their communications. Like to use the codename Jackie Chan again, messing up his film references and not keeping it in one, you know, brand. Zambazov uses Van Damme, as in Jean Claude Van Damme. So Zambazab or Van Damme is the one who's gonna in turn use his contacts in London. More Bulgarians to actually carry out the mission. So it's kind of subcontracting model. And these were the group described as the Minions. So we're not just making this up. Rusev describes them back to Russia as the Minions who are carrying out tasks. And so I think these Minions are, if you like, seen as the lowly figures who are going to kind of do the hard work, I guess, like the Minions from the films, but they've got a bit more personality than the Minions from the film. So who are they? Zambazov or Van Damme? First of all, uses his partner, Katrine Ivanova, with whom he lives in Harrow, North London. They work in healthcare and they run a Bulgarian community group. Now, before you think they are the perfect couple, on the day of the arrest, so on the day that the big raids happen, February 8th, Zambazov isn't with her, is he? He is found naked in the bed of another member of the cell, Vanya Gaborova, when the police come to raid her flat in Euston to arrest her. Now, Ivanova doesn't know about Kabarova. So Zambarzov had come up with a story that he had brain cancer and that that was how he explained his absences to both women and why he couldn't always be where they wanted him to be.

[David McCloskey]

Brain cancer. That's what he went for.

[Gordon Carrera]

That's what he went for.

[David McCloskey]

I mean, that feels extreme to me. I mean, I presume if you had brain cancer, you would be undergoing significant. Maybe. I guess that's why, as I'm saying, it's why he chose it, because he's undergoing significant, like radiation or chemo for periods of time and can disappear. So maybe he's a genius.

[Gordon Carrera]

Maybe. And he's promised Gaburova he'll soon be leaving his partner, even over. But of course he's not going to. So Gaburova, as well as being Zambalzov's kind of mistress, girlfriend, she is a beautician in Acton.

[David McCloskey]

Acton, home of Asma Al Assad, former Syrian First Lady.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah, second time we've had Acton in the pod, but again, not the most glamorous of location. No offense to West London Actor Nights. Now, she runs a salon called Pretty Woman and had recently won an eyelash championship. And she specializes in something called Russian Eyebrows, which I do not know about, but I understand you do.

[David McCloskey]

Well, in addition to researching the Minions, I did a little googling on. On Russian lashes and Russian brows. Two different things, Gordon. Now, if this is incorrect, someone should write in and. And set us straight. But what Gaborova was, was sort of won that eyelash championship for. I guess it's called Russian Volume lash extensions, which is kind of a. It creates almost a fluffy fan type shape in the eyelashes. I guess they're made of synthetic mink. It's very interesting and can last for several weeks. So there you go. And then the Russian brow, which I believe she also did work in is a cosmetic procedure that sort of reshapes, lifts, fixes the brows to give the appearance of a higher and fuller brow. So she was a serious, real deal beautician. And it seems, Gordon, that she had great online reviews as well.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah, everybody needs Gabor over in her life. She is stunning too. Plus, she is very reasonable. Was one of the online reviews.

[David McCloskey]

Stunning and reasonable.

[Gordon Carrera]

So stunning and reasonable. So come for the spying. Stay for the eyelash explanations. That's our podcast. But also. Right, we're nearly there with the Minions. Also in the cell, to make it even more complicated, is her ex boyfriend, Timur Ivanchev. Now, he'd been in a relationship with Gaborova the beautician until the previous year. Hope you're following this. And he'd at one point bought her an engagement ring. This is quite sad. Before discovering she was seeing Zambarzov Van Damme, her handler. But he's still in the cell. And he, Ivanchev, is a painter decorator based in Enfield, but also formerly an international championship open swimmer.

[David McCloskey]

Very diverse set of talents and interests on the part of the Minions.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yes, but what I love is the name Minion was attached to his number in Samba's phone. So if he ever called Sambazo, the phrase Minion would show up.

[David McCloskey]

I am looking at pictures of the mugshots right now, and I do think that of all of them, he is the one who most closely bears a resemblance to the actual Minions in sort of the state of maybe sort of shock and bewilderment on his face compared to the others.

[Gordon Carrera]

And there's also a sixth member of the Cell, Ivan Stoyanov, who fought in mixed martial arts using the name the Destroyer.

[David McCloskey]

That's too on the nose for a villain name, that he needs a more proper villain name like Vector or El Macho or Wild Knuckles or something like that from the first.

[Gordon Carrera]

But he definitely looks it. He's a kind of sturdy character. So there we go. We've got our cast of characters. Rusev in Great Yarmouth is our boss, who thinks he's Q or Dr. Nefario or whatever. And then Zambarz of the wannabe Van Damme, with a complicated love life running the Minions, you know, his partner, even over the girlfriend, the beautician. And then finally Stoyanov the Destroyer.

[David McCloskey]

They're all sleeping with each other and.

[Gordon Carrera]

With Van Damme quite all of. So, having established who they are, let's take a break and then we'll come back and look at what they were up to.

[David McCloskey]

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[Gordon Carrera]

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[David McCloskey]

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[Gordon Carrera]

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[David McCloskey]

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[David McCloskey]

Well, welcome back. We have done our sort of tour dominions here to set up this crew, Gordon, and I guess the question is, what are they getting up to?

[Gordon Carrera]

What are the minions doing?

[David McCloskey]

What are they doing?

[Gordon Carrera]

What are the minions up to? Well, when it comes to their prosecution, the case will be based on six operations across Europe. Now, not all of the team are involved in all of them. They're all involved in, in some of them and that will allow us to kind of look at some of what they were doing. I think they were doing a lot more than those six operations and we'll look at some of them in more detail than others, but it does give a kind of flavour of what we know about it. A lot of this came out in the court case. Want to thank Trevor Barnes, who's a great spy writer himself, who attended every day of the hearings and was really helpful in just exploring some of this detail. But most of the operations we should say, were involved in targeting opponents of the Kremlin in different ways across Europe and not just in Britain. So the first one, which I think is particularly interesting, is targeting Christo Grozev. Now Christo is maybe known to some people here, but he's a Bulgarian himself originally by background, but he becomes best known as a lead investigator into Russian spies, particularly with bellingcat, the open source investigations organization. And bellingcat, we should say, you know, have done this amazing work really over the last 10 years in using open source information, publicly available information or other databases to track particularly Russian activities. And Christo has been at the leading edge of that.

[David McCloskey]

The Organization is really fascinating. Fascinating, I think, has reshaped, frankly, what's possible to do outside of the service of a spy agency. Right. Because they're not working for a government. It's all open source. They have access to a tremendous amount of data, some of which they're sort of buying and synthesizing in really unique ways. And they do have a real deep focus on Russia, the war in Ukraine, also the activities of Russian military intelligence, the gru, all over Europe. I mean, they look at things like wildlife trafficking and, you know, U.S. border Patrol raids. Right. So, I mean, it's a very, very interesting group that's kind of reshaping the world of osint, you know, open source intelligence.

[Gordon Carrera]

I've known Christo many years. I really got to know him around 2018 with the Skripow case, the Salisbury poisoning, because he and his work had done a lot to track down some of the Russian gru, Russian military intelligence officers who'd been behind that, look at their travel pattern and expose them. And so you can see because of.

[David McCloskey]

That, why the Kremlin's not a fan.

[Gordon Carrera]

Of Kristo, why the Kremlin is not a fan of Christo Grotesv. And apparently a message sent to Rusev, who you remember is the Great Yarmouth head of our spy ring. You know, apparently Putin seriously hates him. So the suggestion there is that Putin personally has a thing about Christo. And so you can see absolutely why they would be very interested in them. And there's a very good film which has just come out. The film's called Antidote. There's a TV version called Kill List, which actually looks and follows Christo around this period where he's being put under surveillance. And it's a pretty remarkable insight to what it's like to be under surveillance. And during this period, his father dies, who is in Vienna, and he's worried that it could be suspicious. So there's a real impact on Christo's life. But for a lot of this period, he wouldn't have known he was under surveillance by this group. Christo, by background, Bulgaria. As I said, interesting background. Cause he'd then become a businessman in the radio world, and then, in his words, had a midlife crisis and decided he wanted to go into investigative journalism and gets really involved in this work. So he's traveling all over Europe and this group, the Minions, are tracking him and trying to work out where he's going. They're following him from Vienna, where he was living, to Montenegro. They tell him on a flight to Spain, Ivanova the girlfriend of Zambarzoff, or the partner, covertly films him. He's photographed in a hotel in Valencia eating breakfast. It appears that they talked about trying to use Gaborova the beautician in a honey trap to try and target him. They're compiling reports and they're being sent out back to Russia. So they're providing a really detailed set of information about what Christo is doing, where he is, and you can see the risk and the danger for him for that.

[David McCloskey]

And he comes to believe, right, that the Kremlin had plans to kidnap him. I think he said, send him to a torture camp in Syria. And frankly, this group tailing him, surveilling him, compiling this kind of pattern of life information. Presumably, at some point that planning flips from let's watch him to let's figure out a way to actually kidnap him or kill him. Right? I mean, they're not just doing this for. They're not doing this to collect information on him, they're doing this to find vulnerabilities, right?

[Gordon Carrera]

That's right. I mean, some of the messages within the group and from Moscow are talking about this possibility. Now, they don't actually put in place a kidnap plan, but Rusev, the Great Yarmouth man, says, you know, if Grozev is in Bulgaria, I have the resources to kidnap, drug him and lock him up in a secure cave. Now, I don't quite know what a secure cave is, but they're talking at the very least about it and they don't go through with it. But the danger is clearly there for him and he will be warned. And he's not the only one who is being targeted. So there's also a second operation targeting Roman Dobrikhotov, who is a Russian who fled to the uk. He's another investigative journalist, works for something called the Insider, which is a Russian language publication, also publishes some stuff in English and which, again, exposes stuff the Kremlin's up to. So, again, you can see the motive for the Kremlin wanting to know about him. And again, there's surveillance following him around Europe. There's fascinating detail about this and about how. How they follow him. In one case, they actually manage to get on a flight with him and they've got a corrupt airline worker who is able to give them, A, his flight details and B, seat Ivanova next to him or at least close to him, so that she can try and peer over and actually try and get the pin code from his phone as he's inputting it. So you can see that by having a network of people, they're actually able to really get quite close to these people.

[David McCloskey]

I mean, it does seem like the surveillance that the Minions are sort of undertaking here, I guess feels a little bit maybe inconsistent or incomplete. I mean, they seem to be doing a lot of this while these targets are traveling, which to my mind maybe wouldn't be the easiest place to get them because, you know, they're going to be out of pattern anyway. Understanding we might have an incomplete picture, I can start to understand why Rusev is referring to them as Minions, because it feels a little slap shot to me. They're trying to be helpful and useful, but they're also sort of play acting spy. Right. And they're amateurs. Rusev has some kind of formal engineering and surveillance tech training, but the rest of them really don't.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, there is talk again with Dobrikotov about a kidnap plot and there's talk about kidnapping him in the UK and then smuggling him out in a small boat from the Norfolk coast, allowing him to be taken back to Russia on something called Operation Boat, which is a very cleverly codenamed operation. But the view was again, you know.

[David McCloskey]

That was typed Operation and the cursor just, just sat there for about 20 seconds and he couldn't come up with anything better. And then he just typed in boat.

[Gordon Carrera]

Boat, boat, Operation, Kid, that boat. I mean, it's quite interesting because they seem to get a lot of their ideas from a previous spy operations. So there's some references to the Mossad abduction of Eichmann, a Nazi fugitive. And also in some of their messages, supposedly to the French intelligence's sinking of the Rainbow Warrior, which is something we did an episode about or series about a few months ago.

[David McCloskey]

And it doesn't go well for the French, by the way, so it doesn't want to be. That's not where I'd take. I'd maybe go more on the Eichmann side as opposed to the French failure to escape New Zealand after blowing up a Greenpeace boat.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah, but we should say that our pod is not designed give undercover teams any ideas of possible plots, because we just want to disassociate ourselves from any. Any Russian spy rings currently listening who think they can get some ideas from this.

[David McCloskey]

Our sponsors at the Norfolk Tourism Board have expressly want. They wanted us to give that disclaimer. So thank you.

[Gordon Carrera]

Exactly. I've done that. I've done that properly. There are some more of the operations we won't go into too much detail about them. There's another one targeting a former Russian official who's fled to Montenegro. Gabor, over the beautician, goes over there, she's using some kind of smart glasses which can take pictures to try and record some footage of him. They're renting a villa in Montenegro. They're talking about kidnapping plans. Supposedly there, there is a team from Russian intelligence who are also on the ground featuring, according to one news report, a chain smoking blonde referred to as Red Sparrow, which is one of those.

[David McCloskey]

The Jason Matthews novel, great novel.

[Gordon Carrera]

Then we've got two operations linked to Kazakhstan. Again, we won't go into too much detail. This surveillance of a former Kazakh politician in London. Now when Stoyanov, who is the destroyer, the mixed martial arts guy, he's challenged for sitting in a parked car outside this guy's house. He comes up with a cover story about that he's actually working for a nearby hospital and he places an NHS sign on his vehicle the next day, you know, as cover. Then they also, there's, there's one more interesting one on, on the Kazakh side where they target the Kazakh embassy in London, or at least they talk about it. This is interesting because they were going to create a fake opposition group, stage a demonstration including throwing fake pig's blood, also do a deep fake pornographic video of the Kazakh president's son. And then they would feed intelligence about this fake group to the Kazakh intelligence services. And supposedly this was all done to try and improve Moscow's position or relationship with the Kazakh. So it's, it's kind of weird.

[David McCloskey]

Well, I will say, I mean, so I don't want to plug my books too much on this podcast, Gordon, but in my second, in my second novel, there's a whole scene where Russian intelligence officers are using real pig's blood to sort of create the sense that there's an accident, someone. There's a corpse thrown on a car and there's pig's blood that the corpse has been filled with that splashes everywhere and then it's used to sort of put the heat on somebody in Moscow. X so but I don't know why they would use fake pig's blood. You can just get a real pig.

[Gordon Carrera]

That's true. Go down the butchers. I think the slightest more squeamish bit of me would rather get some fake stuff.

[David McCloskey]

The authenticity is lacking here in these operations, I think.

[Gordon Carrera]

Right, let's come to one more operation because I think this is actually a really significant one and an important one because it's a US military barracks place called Patch Barracks in Stuttgart. And this operation is I think particularly significant because this base is believed to be a place where Ukrainian troops were being trained by the US in surface to air weapons systems and particularly air defence systems like the Patriot missile battery. So it's an important location and the group are sent out there to try and spy on this base. Now they'd adapted a secondhand Chrysler car in order to put into it something called an IMSI grabber or IMSI cratcher, just to explain to people what that is. It's quite small, it's about the size of a shoebox, costs a lot, costs about 120,000 pounds. You can't buy it on the normal commercial market because it's something that law enforcement and spies use because it creates a fake cell phone tower, effectively a mobile fake cell phone tower. So if someone's phone is in the area, it will connect to that rather than a real cell phone tower. And then you can extract all their data and identify their phone by having it connect to you. So it's quite a useful, quite a high end piece of kit and they put it inside the car and there's a picture of it which has got a big red button on the front of the car by the air conditioning vent which you press, which would kind of start the IMSI grabber and allow you to do that. So that I think is quite interesting in terms of what, what they were going to do because it looks like the idea was the Russians know that there are Ukrainian troops training on air defence at that base. So if you can identify them and their phones, that becomes really useful when they go back to Ukraine. Because one of the things that, you know, anyone who's followed the Ukraine conflict closely will know is that the Russians have been launching all these airstrikes, drones, missiles on Ukraine and Ukraine has limited air defense to try and stop those. And it's vital and they go to huge efforts to try and protect their air defense. So I remember when I've been in Kyiv in Ukraine, one of the things you're not allowed to do or they're very careful about you doing is putting on social media or filming any footage showing where air defence interceptors are being launched up at incoming drones and missiles. And the reason is because they don't want the Russians in real time to be able to go that's where the air defense is, because then they will just drop a missile down on that air defense system like a Patriot missile battery and take it out. So those are hugely sensitive things for Ukraine because they've got a limited number. And the point about this operation, which I think is really interesting, is it would have allowed them, wouldn't it, for the Russians to potentially use the phones of those being trained to use it to find them and locate them and then take them out.

[David McCloskey]

There's different variations of them, right. So some of them that can actually pull data from phones, others that just sort of almost like catch the phone, like a tower, then release it, but you end up with the. With the mc, the international Mobile Subscriber identity number. And then you could match that to the MC numbers you're grabbing in, in Kiev, let's say. And if they appear in both locations, you can have some certainty that it's a Ukrainian, you know, air defense officer. And wherever that phone is pinging in Kyiv would be a location that you would want to target with a missile. Right. They're using minions. But it's a pretty sophisticated, pretty nefarious plot, I would say. Right. That could have had real battlefield implications on the war in Ukraine.

[Gordon Carrera]

Absolutely. I think that's a really good point because I think it's smart, it's technically proficient, because you've got these devices and they've clearly got them from somewhere and it's got real consequences. Because if you take out those air defenses, then more Russian missiles, more Russian drones are going to get through, people are going to die, people are going to D Kyiv, in other cities across Ukraine as a result of that kind of activity. So I think it goes back to the sense that just because these weren't highly trained spies, it doesn't mean the consequences couldn't have been serious. So Zambazov and Ivanova, the couple go out on a reconnaissance mission and they seem to film the perimeter. Then on 1 February 2023, the handler in Russia tells Rusev that apparently 70 Ukrainians have arrived in Germany to train how to use the Patriot air defence system. So at this point they are planning to head out. So the plan is for them to go out to Stuttgart to use this IMC grabber hidden in the car and to capture some of the signals. And then it's at that point on 8 February 2023, just as that's being planned, that they're busted by Scotland Yard and the British police.

[David McCloskey]

And it's gotta be the case that at that point the police had been watching and were probably in the comms, right, and saw this and said, we can't allow this to happen. I would think you would think.

[Gordon Carrera]

But actually, people have said that they've denied that there was a direct link between that.

[David McCloskey]

So why.

[Gordon Carrera]

I agree it's a bit mysterious and maybe we'll explore that a bit more, which is why they do get arrested and how they get onto them, because I think there are some mysteries about that. But I agree it looks very, very suspicious, the fact that they are arrested just as they're planning to go out to Stuttgart. But that is just one of those missions from the Minions. They're being paid for it. We should say about €210,000, roughly. £200,000 or whatever, is going into Rusev's account, the Great Yarmouth man's account, and then out to the other five for that work. Where's it coming from? Well, it's coming from Moscow, so I think maybe. David, shall we stop there? And next time we'll resume and we'll look at who's running this operation. The mastermind, the supervillain, this baddie running.

[David McCloskey]

This crew in Moscow.

[Gordon Carrera]

That's right. So see you next time for Minions, spy gadgets and the secret mastermind.

[David McCloskey]

See you next time.