'Burn him alive on the street': how Russian journalist was targeted in UK by spy ring

Still living in hiding, Roman Dobrokhotov tells Daniel Boffey the Kremlin will definitely try to kill him again

- Daniel Boffey

The long-running trial of the Russian spy ring did at least bring clarity for journalist Roman Dobrokhotov and his young family.

"The worst situation is when you don't know," the 41-year-old Russian said, nursing a tumbler of whisky. "When you don't know whether you should be very much worried, or you can relax. Now, definitely I know there will be other attempts."

As revelations tumbled out of the dock at the Old Bailey in recent months, Dobrokhotov, editor of the Insider, a Russian news website, has had to confront a host of uncomfortable truths.

Six Bulgarian nationals with settled status in the UK - Katrin Ivanova, 33, Vanya Gaberova, 30, Tihomir Ivanchev, 39, Orlin Roussev, 46, Ivan Stoyanov, 32, and Biser Dzhambazov, 43 were operating between 2020 and 2023 as a Kremlin spy ring based in London and Great Yarmouth that was highly sophisticated and seemingly murderous in its intent.

It was run remotely by Jan Marsalek, a former chief operating officer at Wirecard, wanted over a £1.6bn bank fraud, who acted as an intermediary for the Russian intelligence services.

Dobrokhotov, who in 2019 had revealed the identities of the Russian agents behind the failed nerve agent attack on Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, was one of the ring's targets along with his colleague on that investigation, the Bulgarian journalist Christo Grozev.

The court heard how two leading members of the ring, Roussev and Marsalek, had discussed using ricin or the nerve agent VX to poison Dobrokhotov, who fled Russia in 2021 and moved to the UK in January 2023.

In one message, Marsalek dismissed an idea, proposed by Roussev, that Dobrokhotov could have an "accident" in the shower, saying: "I fear that's not dramatic enough... we need something of symbolic value.