What we don’t know about the suspected Bulgarian spies

As a British former foreign correspondent in Moscow and Washington, there are few subjects I turn to with more trepidation than spying, and specifically the Russian variety. On the one hand, there is the 007 factor – the glamour, the martinis, and the derring-do – which colours perceptions on both sides. On the other is the awareness that espionage is a slithery, shape-shifting branch of human activity, where the only constant is that little is as it seems.  

This is by way of a preface to the news – emblazoned on the front pages of most UK papers today – that three Bulgarian citizens, long resident in the UK, have been arrested and are accused of spying for Russia. They are scheduled to stand trial at the Old Bailey in January – an unusually speedy timetable, given the endemic delays in the English court system.   

That said, it is worth looking at what we know – or rather what the UK authorities want us to know – and what we do not know.