42. Putin’s Minions: The Master in Moscow (Ep 2)

The Rest Is Classified

Goalhanger

History

4.6 • 732 Ratings

🗓️ 29 April 2025

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The game is afoot, and the stakes are higher than ever. Who was the real villain in the Minions spy saga? How did a fintech tycoon become a key player in Russian espionage? And what does this case reveal about the Kremlin's increasingly brazen tactics? As the story of the Bulgarian spy ring unfolds, a web of deception and international intrigue emerges. The key to the puzzle lies in the identity of the handler, a man whose double life and connections to Russian intelligence raise troubling questions about the reach of the Kremlin's power. Listen as Gordon and David follow the money, messages, and Minions to expose the truth behind this audacious act of espionage. ------------------- Order a signed edition of David's latest book, The Seventh Floor, ⁠via this link.⁠ Pre-order a signed edition of Gordon's latest book, The Spy in the Archive, ⁠via this link.⁠ ------------------- Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼⁠ www.nordvpn.com/restisclassified⁠ It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! Exclusive INCOGNI Deal: To get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan, go to ⁠incogni.com/restisclassified⁠ Email: [email protected] Twitter: ⁠@triclassified⁠ Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Callum Hill Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:33.1	Can we use this MC catcher in Germany? We need to spy on Ukrainians at a German military base.
0:44.7	Sure we can. Both are sitting and gathering dust in my Indiana Jones garage.
0:50.3	Do you have a qualified minion? One, yes.
0:53.7	Only one?
0:55.3	A new task currently under development.
0:57.9	Go on a tour in Germany for one or two days.
1:00.6	There has to be observation made for the entrance to a training regiment for Ukrainian soldiers.
1:07.3	Well, welcome to the rest is classified.
1:09.9	I'm David McCloskey. And I'm Gordon Carrara.
1:12.3	And that was not us reading chat GPT prompts in strange accents. That was, in fact, a series of messages exchanged between a very mysterious handler in Russia and the leader of a Bulgarian spy ring in London, a group that's
1:30.2	just been convicted and whose story we're looking at in this closing episode, part two, of the
1:36.7	minions spy ring. And Gordon, last time we looked at how this group of minions is kind of weird, I guess almost slow horses
1:46.1	like story of this Bulgarian spy ring that's being run out of a guest house at the
1:52.2	wonderfully beautiful Norfolk beach up on the British coast. There's a six-person group, many of whom are sleeping with each other, and all of whom
2:04.0	have very strange sort of nicknames and jobs. They've all been carrying out surveillance on
2:10.1	opponents of the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin. They had been hatching this plot to spy on Ukrainians that were training at a U.S. military base on an air
2:21.2	defense system. And the group, they've been very active carrying out these surveillance operations.
2:26.7	And this time, we are going to finally get to the identity of this mysterious handler in Russia.
2:34.5	Yeah, so you read with a brilliant accent, which might become more explicable when we get to.
	...

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