U.K. to charge 5 people suspected of spying for Russia with conspiracy to conduct espionage
CBSN
U.K. prosecutors said Thursday that they had authorized charges of conspiracy to conduct espionage against three men and two women suspected of spying for Russia. The charges come after an investigation by the Counter Terrorism Command of London's Metropolitan Police.
The five people are Bulgarian citizens between the ages of 29 and 45. In a statement, the head of Britain's Crown Prosecution Service, Nick Price, named them as Orlin Roussev, Bizer Dzhambazov, Katrin Ivanova, Ivan Stoyanov and Vanya Gaberova, and said they "will be charged with conspiring to collect information intended to be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy for a purpose prejudicial to the safety and interest of the state between 30 August 2020 and 8 February 2023."
Three of the defendants were charged earlier this year with possessing false identity documents, Price said.
Southern Gaza Strip — In a rare moment of access to the war-ravaged Palestinian territory, CBS News visited a critical aid distribution center on Wednesday just inside the Gaza Strip, near the Karem Shalom border crossing from Israel. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza after more than a year of the Israel-Hamas war remains dire.
Moscow — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday made a rare admission of failings by his powerful security agencies over the Ukraine-orchestrated killing of a senior general in Moscow. Lt. General Igor Kirillov, the head of the Russian military's chemical and biological weapons unit, was killed by a bomb planted in a scooter in Moscow on Tuesday, the boldest assassination claimed by Kyiv since the start of the conflict.
A judge in France on Thursday found the former husband of Gisèle Pelicot, who admitted to drugging and raping her repeatedly over the course of almost a decade and inviting dozens of other men to assault her as well, guilty of aggravated rape. He was given the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
Moscow — Former Royal Ballet star Sergei Polunin, famous for his tattoos of Russian President Vladimir Putin, on Wednesday announced that he plans to leave Russia. The Ukrainian-Russian dancer was one of the most prominent stars who backed Russia's unilateral 2014 annexation of Crimea and its military assault on Ukraine. He was rewarded with prestigious state posts.