Red hands stenciled on the Wall of the Righteous, in front of the Shoah Memorial, Paris, May 14, 2024. ANTONIN UTZ/AFP
This, then, is the face of Russian interference in Europe – tragically ordinary, almost insignificant. It is that of the young man accused of taking part in the vandalism at the Shoah Memorial on the night of May 13, 2024, giving ever more convoluted and incoherent explanations.
Kiril Milushev, a 28-year-old Bulgarian national, is accused of filming the bloody hands stenciled by two accomplices onto the Wall of the Righteous, which adorns the memorial complex's façade in Paris's 4th arrondissement. He described a trip to France allegedly for the sole purpose of transporting cigarettes, then a night of drinking that supposedly spiraled out of control without his knowledge. He claimed to have seen nothing, understood nothing and to have been "used." That did not stop him from leaving, a few weeks later, for assignments in Germany and Switzerland, this time focused on denouncing the war in Ukraine.
This trial, which opened on Wednesday, October 29, before the 14th chamber of the Paris Criminal Court and will last three days, is anything but insignificant. It is the first to concern the series of acts of interference that began in 2023, combining physical actions and online campaigns, which French intelligence services attribute to Russia.
