11/29/2022 0 Comments Spy network mod![]() ![]() "It looks like maybe the Russians recruited this single MOD official, who then expanded the network to include others and it was all run through that central point," said the NATO official of the spycraft involved. 'That's a major mistake to leave all the sub-agents exposed in a single trail'Īfter months of closely watching the two Russian officers meet the handler and his wife, Bulgarian authorities became convinced that they had the entire cell under surveillance because of the single point of contact between the spies: The woman who was married to the top official involved, nicknamed "The Resident" by Bulgarian officials, a play on an old KGB term for a spy. An American or French officer with terrible Bulgarian - but good Russian - would make sense but the SVD has no excuse," the official told Insider. But that it's in illiterate Bulgarian makes me crazy. "The tasking memo was pretty amateurish but normal I guess, they wanted as much info on anything related to NATO that wasn't Bulgarian because they don't care about Bulgaria they clearly only care about foreign NATO officers. ![]() The counterintelligence official was particularly shocked at both the clumsy nature of the operation and the bizarre lack of language skills of those running it, considering the spies involved would have been elite intelligence officials with extensive language training who were working in Bulgarian, a Slavic language with close ties to Russia. ( There is a lengthy Twitter thread discussing details of the failed operation here, by the journalist Christo Grozev of Bellingcat.) "This isn't a bunch of dumb thugs from the GRU either, this is the proper SVD running operations from an embassy in a NATO capital." "And who is running this woman - again married to one of the top agents - on the Russian side? The top two Russian diplomats at the embassy in Sofia run her themselves to the point they're caught on video with her," said the NATO official. "They've got the wife of a prominent figure in the defense industry - who happens to hold dual Bulgarian-Russian passports - coordinating a bunch of agents herself and she's on video taking meetings at the embassy and in public with Russian officials," said a NATO counterintelligence official who works undercover and cannot be named. A tasking memo written 'in illiterate Bulgarian' ![]()
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