The hand of Moscow? The men jailed for vandalism in the French hybrid war case

The trial this week of three undercover agents accused of helping the Kremlin wage a hybrid war campaign to “destabilize” France sounds like a surefire recipe for drama, sophistication and intrigue.

If only.

For three days, in a spacious, pine-panelled courtroom in the northern suburbs of Paris, the case against three seemingly unremarkable Bulgarians, seated behind glass and overshadowed by three police officers who seemed engrossed in their own mobile phones, unfolded with all the glitz and excitement of a half-whispered lecture in a library.

“I had absolutely no idea where we were.”

“I did it for the money.”

“In the future, I plan to get involved in charity work.”

These few lines from the men’s testimony can help convey the general tone.

All three were sentenced Friday to two to four years in prison.

But to bemoan the barely perceptible banality of it all—the boring motives, the tacit attempts to shift blame, the bleak laments about prison life and unsatisfactory psychiatric evaluations—is to miss the truth.

Banality is the whole thing.

Like the cheap drones that Russia and Ukraine now use to patrol their front lines, the three men on trial in Courtroom 2.01 at the Palais de Justice in Paris represent a low-budget evolution of modern hybrid warfare.

Improvised and startlingly effective.

Standing up in succession in their glass cage, Georgi Filipov, Nikolay Ivanov and Kiril Milushev admitted to having committed the acts, but denied working for a foreign power and denying anti-Semitism.

Early one morning in May 2024, on the banks of the Seine in the heart of Paris, the three men conspired to spray red paint — and filmed themselves doing so — on the Wall of the Righteous, a memorial to those who saved French Jews from the Holocaust during World War II.

Thirty-five red handprints were left on the Shoah Memorial. Another five hundred were painted elsewhere.

It was the first of a series of symbolic attacks in France: placing pigs’ heads in front of mosques (an act blamed on a group of Serbs); coffins left ominously by the Eiffel Tower; Stars of David painted around the capital.

News of each event was quickly broadcast around the world — not just by the mainstream media, but also by an automated army of Russian social media trolls who, according to the French agency monitoring such activity, routinely try to weaponize any news that might cast doubt on the stability of French society and the strength of European democracies, their institutions and their values.

France is seen as a particularly tempting target for the Kremlin, given its current political and social divisions, its often ambivalent attitude towards NATO, its large Muslim and Jewish populations, the growing popularity of the far right and its history of close ties with Moscow at both ends of the political spectrum.

In another era, the Kremlin might have used its own undercover agents to carry out acts of sabotage or vandalism.

But – to make the drone war comparison again – why rely solely on valuable assets such as well-trained spies, giant ballistic missiles or submarines used to cut undersea cables, when for a few thousand euros you can, through discrete and easily deniable channels, hire your own disgruntled army of petty criminals or unemployed fascists?

“I had absolutely no idea where we were,” Georgi Filipov said as he tried to downplay his alleged role in Operation Red Hands, claiming he had traveled from Bulgaria simply to earn some money to help support his nine-year-old son.

He is said to have been paid €1,000 (£875) plus travel expenses.

In the dock, Filipov, 36, was a haggard but muscular figure, twitching slightly like a boxer before a fight as he tried to deflect awkward questions about his tattoos. In particular, the swastika on his chest and photos on social media showing him giving a Nazi salute and wearing a T-shirt claiming that Hitler was “right”.

“I’ve made bad choices in the past,” Filipov explained, pointing out that he’s already had several tattoos removed.

The Paris Criminal Court sentenced him to two years in prison.

After being successfully extradited from Bulgaria and Croatia to face trial in France, all the men tried to pin the blame on a fourth man, Mircho Angelov, who is still at large but is believed to have ties to a Russian intelligence officer. He was given a three-year term in absentia.

The second accused, 28-year-old Kiril Milushev, said he only came to France because he had split up with his partner, was struggling with bipolar disorder and wanted to keep his friend Mircho company. They gave him two years.

Sitting next to Milushev, Nikolai Ivanov frowned, denying ties to Russia.

He talked about his grandparents’ role in saving Jews during World War II and said his ambition now is to get a master’s degree in law and reunite with his girlfriend – if she still has him when this is all over.

Considered to be the mastermind behind the plot, he received the heaviest prison term of four years.

As for Russia’s alleged role in the red-handed affair, even defense lawyers have openly admitted that we “suspect” Moscow’s hand.

But they insisted, as did their clients, that they were unwitting pawns, fronts – one might even say “drones” – in a shadow war against the West.