PARIS — Suspected Russian proxies standing trial for defacing the Paris Holocaust Museum with red paint last year later traveled to Germany and Switzerland, where French investigators suspect they might have been involved in other provocative acts.
Four Bulgarian men went on trial in a Paris court on Wednesday, accused of participating in tagging the museum and dozens of other Parisian buildings with red hand impressions. The prosecution suspects the May 2024 raid was part of Moscow’s undeclared but multi-faceted hybrid war on the continent.
Of the four suspects, Mircho Angelov, 27, is on the run, while Nikolay Ivanov, 42, was arrested in Croatia last year and was extradited. Police investigation documents cited in court alleged they had “received instructions in Russian via Telegram.”
According to information provided by the Bulgarian authorities, also cited in court, Angelov and a third suspect, Kiril Milushev, 28, traveled to Germany shortly after the Paris operation. The French prosecutor noted that the Munich grave of Stepan Bandera, a nationalist Ukrainian politician active in the 1930s and 1940s, had been tagged around the same time. Citing intelligence shared by a foreign country, she asked whether the Paris raid suspects had been involved.
Milushev dismissed the theory as “absurd.” Dressed in a white shirt and sporting a light beard, he admitted to having visited Germany with Angelov but said they had gone there to buy a second-hand car.
Milushev also admitted to traveling to Switzerland with Ivanov, who didn’t deny the trip. The latter didn’t visit Paris but paid for hotel rooms for the three others and for their flights back to Sofia after the Holocaust Museum was defaced.
The Swiss trip came ahead of a high-level Ukraine summit in the country.
“We were meant to put [up] stickers [for peace] but we didn’t do it,” Milushev said.
Ivanov acknowledged paying for the Paris trip of the other three suspects, but said he had done so as a favor to Angelov, who later paid him back.
But according to the judge, intelligence shared by a foreign country points to Ivanov as a likely “hiring party for proxies” involved in Russian hybrid war operations.
Ivanov said he had only wanted to help Angelov and described himself as “a pacifist.”
The fourth suspect, Georgi Filipov, 36, is also being investigated in another case of suspected Russian interference, in which coffins bearing the words “French soldiers of Ukraine” were left near the Eiffel Tower. In court, Filipov admitted to having transported the coffins but said he had been unaware of how they would be used. He also expressed regret for the defacing of the Holocaust Museum.
The trial, which continues Thursday and Friday, offers a rare window into Russia’s suspected hybrid war operations across Europe and the links between the multiple cases of possible foreign interference that are currently under investigation.
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