Putin’s Russian spies hiding in plain sight in Britain, says Alicia Kearns

Orlin Roussev, Bizer Dzhambazov, and Katrin Ivanova (Image: BBC) Like something out of the TV show the Americans, news broke yesterday that Britain has arrested three Bulgarian nationals accused of spying across Europe on behalf of Putin’s Kremlin. Hiding in plain sight, just like the Russian agent who reportedly snuck into our country by abusing the Homes for Ukraine programme, the Iranian assets who have attempted over 15 assassinations on British streets, and the Chinese Communist Party’s illegal Police Stations before we got them closed down: hostile states are making it their business to infiltrate our country. The question now is who were the Russian agents’ targets? Was it Putin’s oligarchs – keeping them in line so they keep enabling Putin to commit war crimes? Was it Russian dissidents and those brave opponents of Putin who dare to speak out against industrial kleptocracy in the Kremlin? Or was it recruiting assets to assist Putin to undermine the UK and diminish our ability to support Ukraine in its fight for our collective freedoms? It could even have been about operations in Bulgaria in the interests of the Russian state, run from the UK. Putin with Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu (Image: Getty) What we can be sure of is that they will have been feeding off the rot of Russian money, oligarchs and state assets that run deep in London. Let us hope that before their arrests our intelligence services identified, and can now expose, where their orders were coming from, their networks and communication tactics so that we can shut down their web of contacts and assets. We may yet see further fallout from this investigation, including the throwing out of any handlers at the Russian embassy in London. With nineteen passports between them, from an array of countries across Europe, they’re clearly well-financed and resourced. But this highlights a more serious vulnerability beyond counterfeit IDs, there is a threat of Russian and Chinese spies – and probably Iranian, North Korean and others – acquiring identities and paperwork from countries with whom we enjoy better relations, and using these legitimate passports to secure entry to the UK and cover for their nefarious activities and goals. The final question is what next for the Bulgarian Three? Will they face decades of imprisonment in the UK? Will they be part of a swap for British interests being detained by the Russians? Or could they form part of a swap for brave Ukrainians being detained by Putin? For now what we can say is thank you to our intelligence services and police who are working tirelessly to hunt down hostile assets, actors and those willing to commit treason to assist them. Alicia Kearns, Chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee