French сourt сonvicts four Bulgarians for desecrating Holocaust Memorial in Russian-ordered operation

According to Ukrinform, the Associated Press reported this.

“Four Bulgarians were sentenced to between two and four years in prison for their involvement in spray-painting blood-red hands on Paris’ Holocaust Memorial in an act of vandalism that French intelligence services linked to a destabilization campaign by Russia,” the report states.

The Paris court sentenced Georgi Filipov and Kiril Milushev, who admitted their involvement in the crime, to two years in prison, while Nikolay Ivanov, accused of recruiting them, received four years. The alleged ringleader, Mircho Angelov, who remains at large, was sentenced in absentia to three years’ imprisonment.

All four individuals were also banned from entering French territory for life.

According to court documents, French intelligence services asserted that the “Red Hands” graffiti were part of a Russian strategy involving paid intermediaries to sow division in public opinion, incite social tensions, and spread disinformation.

The court stated that “foreign interference aimed at dividing the French society, but that does not in any manner alleviate individual responsibility.”

The “Red Hands” graffiti appeared on the Holocaust Memorial during the night of 13–14 May 2024, as well as on several buildings in the 4th and 5th arrondissements of the French capital. These symbols are considered a reference to the 2000 lynching of two Israeli soldiers in Ramallah.

As Ukrinform reported, in April, the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs protested the theft of a Virtuti Militari order relief and the Cross of the September Campaign of 1939 from the Katyn victims’ war memorial in the village of Mednoye (Tver region, Russian Federation).

Illustrative photo

Ukrinform photos available for purchase here.