Two panels of the Sofia Military Court will decide whether to keep in custody the five members of an espionage group which gathered information in favour of Russia. Six people were detained during a raid on Thursday, but one of them presented a confession and was let out on bail.

Five Bulgarian military, both on active duty and former ones, have been detained on suspicion of passing classified information to Russia in what the Prosecutor General's spokesperson Siika Mileva described on Friday as a "spy ring". The wife of one of them, who holds Bulgarian and Russian citizenship, was also arrested in the case.

The military judges' hearings will run in parallel, and there will be a separate ruling for each of the detainees. The meetings will be closed, due to the secrecy of the documents. The first meeting was scheduled for 11 am on Sunday.

The leader of the group, according to the prosecution, was former military intelligence officer Ivan Iliev, who was trained in Bulgaria and then at the GRU in Moscow. He was tasked with building an illegal intelligence network and recruited persons with access to classified information related to NATO and the EU. His wife was also a part of the group, acting like an intermediary between her husband and an employee of the Russian embassy, handing over documents and money.

Some of the group's recruits were trained in operational skills by the group leader. One of them was a senior staff member of the Ministry of Defence, who dealt with the planning and budget of the department. Several others were part of the Bulgarian military intelligence, including one that prepared information about hybrid threats and risks, including ones from Russia, one that was sent on a mission with contingents abroad, and a director of the classified registry at the National Assembly who was also a former secretary, military attache and defense attache abroad./BTA