World Briefing: March 8, 2025

Two women and a man have been found guilty of spying for Russia in a huge espionage operation from a rundown former guesthouse north of London. Katrin Ivanova, 33, a lab assistant, Vanya Gaberova, 30, a beautician, and Tihomir Ivanchev, 39, a painter and decorator, have all been convicted of spying for Russia. The group acted as spies working for the Russian intelligence service, also known as GRU. The women were both involved in relationships with Bizer Dzhambazov, 43, a medical courier who ran the ground operations of the spy ring. The spy ring was run by Orlin Roussev, 46, a former City worker who set up a freelance espionage operation from a 33-room ex-guesthouse in Great Yarmouth. The spy ring’s contact in Moscow was allegedly an Austrian man called Jan Marsalek, 44, the former chief operating officer of a major finance and tech company called Wirecard which collapsed in 2020 amid allegations of fraud. All are Bulgarian nationals with EU-settled status after living in the UK for a number of years. Roussev and Dzhambazov both pleaded guilty to espionage charges but the three others denied the charges. Wanted by the German authorities, Marsalek fled to Russia, where he allegedly ran the network. The cell was said to have used “sophisticated methodology” which included advanced technology and false identities in order to acquire information and imagery, before compiling detailed reports on their targets to send to Moscow. One of the tasks of the spy ring was to gather information about dissidents and prominent individuals of interest to the Russians. Their targets included Christo Grozev, a journalist who worked for the British investigative website Bellingcat and was responsible for identifying the GRU agents accused of poisoning MI6 double agent Sergei Skripal with Novichok nerve agent in Salisbury in March 2018. Marsalek said Vladimir Putin “seriously hated” Grozev and contemplated killing him with a sledgehammer. The spy ring conducted surveillance in Knightsbridge and Kensington in London and even considered using a drone to spray pigs’ blood over the Kazakhstan Embassy as part of a fake protest. Commander Dominic Murphy, head of Scotland Yard’s SO15, which deals with state threats, said it was one of the largest spying investigations in the last 20 years. “This was spying on an almost industrial scale on behalf of the Russian intelligence services and lots of their activity goes to the very heart of the freedoms and national security that we need to try and protect here in the UK,” he said. - Sky News

The Daily Telegraph reported that, since 2020, Marsalek has also been involved in a secret project to supply drones from China for use in the war in Ukraine and in the selling of weapons captured by Putin’s forces on the battlefield back to the People’s Liberation Army, allowing Beijing to uncover Western military secrets. Intelligence sources have told The Telegraph that Marsalek still travels regularly, mainly between Russia and the Middle East, and that he has been linked to both the gold trade and money laundering operations in Namibia.

A day after offering Canada a one-month reprieve on punishing, virtually across-the-board 25% tariffs, President Donald Trump has threatened new tariffs as soon as Friday on Canadian lumber and dairy products. It’s yet another twist in a serpentine trade policy that seems to shift on an hourly basis. “Canada has been ripping us off for years on lumber and on dairy products,” Trump said in an Oval Office address Friday, citing Canada’s roughly 250% tariff on US dairy exports to the country. Trump said America would match those tariffs dollar-for-dollar. “We may do it as early as today, or we’ll wait until Monday or Tuesday,” Trump said. “We’re going to charge the same thing. It’s not fair. It never has been fair, and they’ve treated our farmers badly.” Canadian trade minister Mary Ng pushed back on Trump’s comments, saying his claim that Canada was “ripping off” the United States was “not true.” Trump’s announcement gave investors, businesses and consumers another strong dose of whiplash. Just one day earlier, on Thursday, Trump announced a one-month pause on all tariffs on Canada and Mexico on products that comply with the US-Mexico-Canada free trade treaty, known as the USMCA. That had, at least temporarily, given many industries, especially autos and agriculture, a major sigh of relief.

A Pentagon agency said on Friday that it had “temporarily suspended” the sharing of satellite imagery with Ukraine in accordance with orders from President Trump, the latest in a series of steps taken by the administration to pressure Kyiv into peace talks with Russia. The move, by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, could shut off a vital window on the war for Ukraine, which has used satellite images purchased by the United States to track the movements of Russian troops and to assess damage to infrastructure on both sides of the long front line, according to a Ukrainian defense news agency. The Trump administration has also halted military aid and stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine after a contentious White House meeting last week with the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky. The end of American assistance, analysts said, could reorder the battlefield and potentially give Russia a decisive advantage - NYT

Just hours after Donald Trump threatened to slap Russia with sanctions and tariffs and then whiplashed back to say he was “finding it more difficult” to deal with Kyiv rather than Moscow, the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa endured one of its heaviest drone attacks. DTEK, the private energy provider, said it was the seventh strike on its network in the region in the past three weeks. Officials said at least 11 people killed 30 injured in a Russian strike in Donetsk region

Donald Trump’s administration has canceled grants and contracts totaling $400 million to Columbia University because of alleged antisemitic harassment. The school receives millions of dollars from the government for healthcare and science research, but the Trump administration did not say which grants and contracts were being affected. The cuts would come out of the more than $5 billion in grants presently committed to Columbia, the statement said. The announced cuts were likely to face legal challenges, with civil rights groups saying they lacked due process and could be an unconstitutional punishment for protected speech - Reuters

More than half a million passengers will be affected and thousands of flights cancelled due to a 24-hour strike at major German airports on Monday, after trade union Verdi called for employees in the public sector and ground handling to walk out. The association of Germany’s airport operators ADV said that around 510,000 people would be affected and more than 3,400 flights cancelled as a result of the strike, which marks a major escalation after Verdi staged several walk-outs last month. Frankfurt Airport said there would very likely be no departures from Germany’s main hub. It advised passengers to refrain from coming to the airport and called on those transferring through the airport to check the flight status on their airline’s website. Other airports affected on Monday include Munich, Stuttgart, Cologne/Bonn, Duesseldorf, Dortmund, Hanover, Bremen, Hamburg, Berlin and Leipzig-Halle - Reuters

Actor Gene Hackman died a full week after his wife Betsy Arakawa died and lived in the house as her body lay in the bathroom, according to New Mexico officials. New Mexico officials concluded Betsy likely died February 11, and the cause of death was Hantavirus - a serious and rare disease which can be fatal. Gene died February 18. An autopsy revealed the 95-year-old had a history of cardiovascular disease, along with advanced Alzheimer’s. He had a history of heart attacks and high blood pressure. Although the medical investigators did not use the words “heart attack,” it seemed they were going in that direction, although the medical investigator said she could not squarely say that was the cause. They did say heart disease was the cause of death, and Alzheimer’s was a significant contributing factor - TMZ

A Canadian politician appears to have taken Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s fighting talk literally, saying he wants to throw down with Donald Trump Jr. Sen. Patrick Brazeau, of Quebec, challenged President Trump’s son to a boxing match for charity in a post on X. He did so to express his chagrin with the U.S.-Canada trade war, he said. “In light of these bogus tariffs … I challenge you to a fight to raise money for cancer research or an organization of your choosing,” the 50-year-old wrote Thursday. He later told CBC News he was “100 percent serious” and said the bout could even take place on U.S. soil. “Our countries don’t need to be at war but we can fight to raise money,” he added. Brazeau’s challenge, which Don Jr. has yet to publicly acknowledge, comes over a decade since the senator fought Trudeau in a similar charity match in 2012. Trudeau has himself been using pugilistic language since imposing retaliatory tariffs on the U.S. earlier this week, saying: “We are Canadians. We are going to fight and we are going to win.” He repeated the word “fight” several times throughout a press conference on March 4. “Canadians are reasonable, and we are polite, but we will not back down from a fight,” he said, kicking off the punchy address to reporters. - Daily Beast

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