Officially, Kyrill G. works as a chef in France. But the Russian apparently bragged about attacking the Olympic opening ceremony. Now the police have arrested him: He is said to be a Russian agent. (translation in comments)

2 comments

1. *Translation*
   —

   Kyrill G. was drunk. On May 8, the Russian was on his way back from Moscow to his adopted home of Paris, where he worked as a chef. But after a stopover in Istanbul, the airline refused to let him on board – because of the alcohol.

   However, Kyrill G. did not want to be deterred from continuing his journey. He took a cab to the border with Bulgaria, where, according to information from European security circles, he was already expected by an acquaintance. Their destination: the airport in the Black Sea city of Varna.

   But G. only turned up there days later. In the meantime, as the security authorities were able to reconstruct, he drank even more. In a restaurant, a witness probably overheard Cyril G. loudly boasting that he was traveling on behalf of a Russian secret service. The Olympic Games in France would experience “an opening ceremony like never before”, G. is said to have shouted.

   Kyrill G. was arrested in his apartment in Paris on Sunday. The French judiciary accuses him of working for a Russian secret service. According to French security circles, G. was apparently planning a “major project” with “serious consequences” for the Olympic Games.

   The Russian embassy in Paris did not initially respond to a request for comment. Whether G. was really planning an attack, an act of sabotage, an influence operation or was rather drunk and delirious – much is still unclear.

   The Olympic Games in Paris begin on Friday. From the perspective of the security authorities, they would be an ideal target for an attack: they are difficult to protect and a symbol of peace. At the same time, the media attention is so considerable that an attack would be widely publicized.

   Only recently, a Russian citizen was arrested in Roissy near Paris after injuring himself while handling explosives in a hotel room. The French authorities also attribute him to Russian secret services.

   It would be unthinkable if a terrorist attack were to take place during the Games. The security authorities are correspondingly cautious.

   Research by SPIEGEL, the French daily newspaper “Le Monde” and the Russian opposition platform “The Insider” can now trace who Kyrill G. is. According to this, he is at least close to the Russian domestic intelligence service FSB.

   Born in 1984, G. initially studied law in Moscow. He then tried to gain a foothold in the financial sector in Luxembourg. He is said to have been interested in company takeovers and mergers.

   He arrived in France in 2010 – and apparently made an abrupt decision to take up a new profession. He learned to be a chef. After training at a famous Parisian school, he first went to Courchevel, a ski resort in the French Alps that is popular with rich Russians.

   Many traces of his work can be found on the internet. He published cooking tips on YouTube and Instagram. He appeared on a Russian cooking show, as there are many of them in German-speaking countries.

   Was it all just a cover? Or did G. want to make himself more important than he was while drunk? Is it even conceivable that a Russian agent would behave so unprofessionally?

   The answer is not easy: Western security authorities have been warning of a new Russian strategy for some time: sabotage, more or less well prepared, arson, smearings – all designed to cause unrest in the West.

   The situation is complex. Some of these actions are recognized as Russian commissions, others are not. Others are attributed to the Kremlin, although it has nothing to do with them. Still others are seen by intelligence services as Russian sabotage, but not by the police.

   According to European security circles, agents are often not used for these operations. Russian intelligence services rely on amateurs, some of whom are recruited from social networks and paid a few hundred euros. “One constant in everything we observe is the remarkable incompetence,” says a high-ranking European intelligence official.

   Research by SPIEGEL and its partners could not directly attribute G. to one of the Russian intelligence services. However, there are traces.

   Data in leaked Russian databases show that a high-ranking cadre of the Russian domestic intelligence service FSB once booked a Russian domestic flight for Kyrill G.. An acquaintance once asked him to check whether a certain FSB employee was reliable, and he passed this request on.

   G. is also said to have spoken to an acquaintance in Paris about working “for the Russian government”, which does not appear on his CV.

   It also seems suspicious that G. is said to have called a Russian telephone number from Bulgaria and told the person on the other end that everything was “all right”. He allegedly said that he had “recruited another Moldovan from Cisinau”.

   When French police searched the cook’s apartment last Sunday, they are said to have found neither weapons nor explosives. In French security circles, however, it is said that finds of “diplomatic significance” were made.

   This could match the statements of witnesses who saw Kyrill G. in Bulgaria. According to them, he is said to have waved a document in ID format during his alcoholic self-incrimination. Representatives of several European intelligence services now say that a type of FSB ID card was found during the raid in Paris.

2. A very likely distraction. People hired for (or manipulated into) bumbling around and getting all the attention off some absolutely average, well behaved, forgettable guy.