A major sabotage operation disrupted France’s high-speed TGV train network just before the summer rush and the 2024 Paris Olympics. Unknown attackers cut and set fire to crucial fiber optic cables, causing widespread chaos and delays. An investigation is underway, with over fifty gendarmes on the case, but no group has claimed responsibility yet. The attack has left travelers frustrated and railway workers racing to repair the damage, highlighting a mysterious and well-coordinated threat to France’s national infrastructure.
Meanwhile, a Russian chef, Kirill Griaznov, who once starred in a dating show and trained at a top French culinary school, was caught plotting to disrupt the Paris Olympics. His grand plan, directed by Russian intelligence agencies, was exposed after he drunkenly bragged about it while on vacation in Bulgaria. Griaznov, who had deep connections with Russia’s secret services and had been living in France for years, was arrested in Paris with evidence linking him to espionage. French authorities are concerned his mission could have caused serious trouble during the highly anticipated games.
Kirill Griaznov remembered with fondness receiving his training at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, where he was able to study “not just gastronomy, but also art de vivre.”
This 40-year-old haute cuisine chef, who has been a legal resident of France for more than ten years, is currently the subject of a French judicial investigation about his purported employment for foreign intelligence, namely the Russian domestic security agency FSB. The French investigators stated that his goal was “to incite hostilities in France.” Rather, his unmasking resulted from an inebriated attempt to boast about his significant operation.
Griaznov was charged four days after being taken into custody at his Paris residence on July 19 with “diplomatic material,” as stated by the local prosecutor. He may spend 30 years in prison if found guilty reports the Insider.
He was preparing a “large-scale” operation that might have had “serious” repercussions, according to French investigators.
His arrest occurs at a highly stressful time for French authorities, who are already handling several provocations or failed terrorist plots hatched in Moscow. The majority of these have been connected to France’s strong diplomatic and military backing of Ukraine’s war effort. However, a million individuals have been screened for entry to the most heavily guarded sites of the games, and tens of thousands of police have been recruited in anticipation of the start of the Summer Olympics in Paris on July 26. Five thousand people have already been denied entry to the Olympics, according to the Associated Press, with five of them being accused “of foreign interference — we can say spying,” in the words of the French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin.
The Insider, Le Monde, and Der Spiegel conducted a combined investigation that revealed Griaznov’s true objective was the Olympics. He informed his FSB supervisor two months prior that “the French will have an opening ceremony like no other.”
Griaznov hardly seems the part of a highly trained Russian spy, perhaps out to foment trouble at a major international sporting event. Food porn, self-portraits of him wearing fur coats or fitted suits, and surreal videos of him in the kitchen making Ramen and impersonating Turkish culinary celebrity Salt Bae is all over his Instagram account.
Additionally, he shared his recipes for haute food in a magazine connected to Lenta.com, the Russian equivalent of Wal-Mart. “The most unpleasant thing about working with cherries,” he observed, “is removing the pits.”
Griaznov also dabbled in reality TV during his chubbier, glasses-wearing days. He starred in a Russian dating show called “Choose Me,” which was based on ABC’s The Bachelor, and referred to himself as a “successful businessman and restaurateur.”
That is up for debate more than another trait. According to Griaznov’s hacked emails, a number of ex-girlfriends who ended their relationships with him claim that he is an alcoholic and highly impolite in his cups. After their breakup, one of his ex-partners even went so far as to warn him that “alcohol will get to you one day.” It so happens that Griaznov was apprehended in the exact state of loose-lipped inebriation.
He was in Russia on May 7 and was scheduled to depart on a trip from Moscow to Istanbul, where he would then take a later aircraft back to Paris. But he was unable to. At Istanbul Airport, he became so inebriated that he was not allowed to board his flight. Griaznov chose to take a taxi to the Bulgarian border, from whence he was picked up by another vehicle and driven to St. Vlas, a resort town situated on Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast and where Griaznov possesses property.
After spending a few days at his flat, Griaznov traveled to Varna, a city in Bulgaria located sixty miles north of St. Vlas. He continued on to Paris from there. He got wasted again during one of his dinners by the beach, telling the neighbors he was on a special assignment this summer in Paris to sabotage the Olympic opening ceremony. The neighbors were initially astonished. Witnesses told The Insider that Griaznov then flashed his FSB ID at them. A few days later, Griaznov traveled to Varna and boarded a plane. Griaznov called his FSB chief before taking out for Paris to let him know the operation was proceeding as planned. Griaznov went on to say he had brought in “one more Moldovan from Chisinau.”
French investigators will also have noticed this feature.
A Moldovan couple was detained in Paris in November after they spray-painted or stenciled Stars of David all over the city, igniting anti-Semitic sentiment amid the Israeli-Hamas conflict in Gaza. Later on, the couple was connected to agents of the foreign intelligence branch of the FSB, known as Fifth Service. For the procedure, they received payments ranging from 300 to 500 euros. A Western intelligence official, commenting on condition of anonymity, told The Insider that Moldovans are inexpensive and simple to recruit, notwithstanding the lack of evidence linking Griaznov to that or any previous Russian psychological or propaganda effort in France. “It’s one of the poorest countries in Europe and their ability to travel unimpeded from Moldova to anywhere else in Europe is a big boon for Russian spies who can’t,” the official said.
Other Russian schemes and agents have come to light in France in the meanwhile. One entailed lying coffins in front of the Eiffel Tower with French flags bearing the words “French soldiers of Ukraine” on them. This was ostensibly done as a provocation in reaction to contentious remarks made by French President Emmanuel Macron regarding the possibility of eventually sending French troops to Odesa. The 26-year-old Russo-Ukrainian Maxim Dvirnik hurt his face and torso in June while making an explosive device in his hotel room close to Charles de Gaulle airport. Dvirnik’s failed attempt was to plant his homemade bomb at a Bricorama, a well-known French network of hardware and décor stores. The charges against him were “criminal terrorist association” and “possession of substances or explosives with the intent to prepare destruction or harm to persons in relation to a terrorist enterprise.”
The fact that Griaznov was a chef, which is a popular “legend” or cover identity for Russian intelligence assets, appears to have been deliberately planned and dates back more than ten years. After years in a more prosperous career, it seemed to come out of nowhere.
Griaznov studied law in his hometown of Perm, Russia, in the early 2000s, according to his resume, which The Insider was able to access. He didn’t start learning how to cook until 2010 when he enrolled at the renowned French culinary school, Le Cordon Bleu Paris. Griaznov was employed by Hoogewerf & CIE and OCRA Worldwide, two Luxembourg-based firms that provide financial and legal consultancy services, three years prior. 2011 saw Griaznov go to the affluent French ski resort of Courchevel, where he took an internship in the kitchen of K2, a Michelin-starred restaurant favored by Russian elites.
Le Monde contacted Griaznov’s French contacts, but he never brought up his prior financial job in Luxembourg and Moscow. Victor, Griaznov’s longtime buddy, expressed his disbelief in an interview with Le Monde, saying, “I know his whole family and vice-versa.” I went to his house in Moscow and Perm. He came to France because he hates Putin and does not want to go to the front [in Ukraine], lol”.
On September 9, 2012, Griaznov was notified via email by Viviane H., the owner of the apartment he was renting in the Second Arrondissement of Paris, six months later. She was giving him an update. He replied that he had returned to Moscow to work as an “official” in the “Russian government,” but he did not elaborate. There isn’t a single Russian government position mentioned on Griaznov’s CV.
Griaznov owns the real estate in St. Vlas with his brother Dmitri, who works as chief of staff at the secretariat of the Belarus-Russia Union Assembly. This body acts as a latent legislature for the future Russian-Belarusian “union state,” which would be Moscow’s de facto annexation of its neighbor and which the Kremlin has been attempting to establish for years. FSB officers normally work in that body. Additionally, The Insider was able to determine through phone records that Dmitri Griaznov and Andrey Chekanov, who is an official of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence organization, share a personal driver. Living in Zorge 36 in Moscow, Chekanov shares quarters with Denis Sergeev, another GRU spy and a senior member of Unit 29155, the murder and sabotage squad. Sergeev was the operational commander overseeing the failed attempt to fatally poison Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, England in 2018.
The Insider was able to uncover some intriguing correspondence that Kirill Griaznov had in his email account throughout this inquiry. Among these, dated 2009, is a classified military file on Maj. Andrey Belyashov, a GRU airborne Spetsnaz, or special forces, officer who participated in the Second Chechen War. This is not your average document attachment that has been sitting in the inbox of a regular lawyer who has decided to become a cook.
During Griaznov’s stay in Luxembourg, he wrote another email to a British nobleman named Lord Robert Skidelsky on April 11, 2008, expressing his excitement in English: “I’m so pleased that I’ve met you yesterday! Hope to meet you soon in Moscow! We have a lot of things to talk about! Waiting for your reply!”
“I too was happy to meet you – do vskoroi strechi [until next time],” Skidelsky responded the following day. I will be in Moscow from April 13–15, April 22–24, and June 15–16. Griaznov did not write back until September 24, 2008, mentioning just their interaction in Luxembourg and alerting Skidelsky once more in a series of emphatic phrases that he was now in Moscow and hoped to meet up, so it appears that no meeting took place during that time frame.
Russian-born economist, historian, and biographer Skidelsky was made Baron Skidelsky of Tilton, East Sussex County, in 1991. He was removed from the House of Lords in November 2023 for neglecting to disclose his affiliation with a think tank funded by Russian billionaires Mikhail Gutseriev and his son Said. Both men are subject to sanctions from the European Union and the British government for their support of Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus’s long-serving dictator, who brutally suppressed pro-democracy demonstrations in the country. Skidelsky has denounced London’s backing of Ukraine in its defensive struggle against Russia’s full-scale invasion and approved of its ethnically and linguistically divided state. He was also against Finland and Sweden’s recent NATO membership.
Skidelsky was contacted by The Insider for comment, but they did not respond in time for the article to be published.
Griaznov’s correspondence and travel habits further reveal his close ties to the Russian secret services.
According to flight records, he traveled to Moscow in 2019 from his home city of Perm on a jet that Col. Vladimir Bondarchuk, the former head inspector of FSB Unit 53916, the service’s internal security division, had purchased for him.
Griaznov uploaded pictures of himself on his public Facebook page, perhaps unintentionally or as a trolling exercise. In the photos, he is seen holding vintage handguns and rifles, standing next to a bust of Josef Stalin, and donning a Soviet secret policeman’s hat.
Griaznov appears to have traveled to the US as well.
Griaznov checked in on Facebook at the Hudson Hotel in the Columbus Circle neighborhood of Manhattan’s Upper West Side in January 2013. He posted on social media about the “special thing about New York: on Saturday night you can go to a restaurant without reservations, with a lot of free tables, a great interior, reasonable prices, great food and a bonus in the form of 2 Michelin stars.” It appears that he also dined at the upscale Italian restaurant Marea, off Central Park South, during that trip.
Leaked emails also reveal that Griaznov saw a Knicks vs. Nets game and a Marinsky Orchestra concert at Carnegie Hall in November 2017, during another quick trip to the United States. In Miami, he also went “drift fishing” for a day. His itinerary was extensive, with extended stays in France, Switzerland, Czechia, and Bulgaria, in addition to shorter visits to the UK, China, and India.
Last week, the thrilling freedom of mobility abruptly ended.
The Search and Intervention Brigade of France arrived at the apartment he rented on Rue Saint-Denis in the Second Arrondissement of Paris at six in the morning on July 19. Le Monde has collected evidence that the raid was conducted under the legal pretext of an “administrative home visit,” intending to apprehend anyone who was thought to be suspicious or threatening. On July 23, the Paris prosecutor’s office launched a legal investigation and accused Griaznov of using “intelligence with a foreign power to incite hostilities in France.” Since then, he’s been held in detention without charge.
Griaznov’s background as a deep-cover agent who poses as a fine-dining chef is remarkably similar to that of another Russian that The Insider has written about. Military electronics engineer by trade, Vitalii Kovalev worked in R&D for a company owned by MiG, Russia’s military helicopter manufacturer, before abruptly quitting to spend two months learning how to cook in his hometown of St. Petersburg. He then found employment in local eateries. After that, Kovalev was granted a special talent visa to move to the West, specifically to the United States, a nation he would never have been able to visit without the FSB’s direct consent due to his military security clearance.
Like Griaznov, Kovalev was not afraid of notoriety when working in posh restaurants in New York and Washington, D.C. He even made appearances on cookery parts of American morning shows. He was arrested after that.
In 2020, Kovalev drove a Mustang at high speed for miles along a roadway in Key West, Florida, dodging police vehicles until his tires blew out from spike strips and he swerved off to the side of the road with an odd amount of surveillance and signal equipment in the trunk. The U.S. authorities later identified Kovalev as a GRU technical officer who was assigned to the cyber unit of the FSB’s 16th Directorate.
Later, the FBI agent who looked into his case began to exhibit symptoms similar to Anomalous Health Incidents, or Havana Syndrome. This agent was highlighted in the 60 Minutes piece in which The Insider and Der Spiegel collaborated on the investigation. After serving two years in jail, Kovalev returned to Russia, where he was enlisted and ordered to fight on the front lines of Ukraine, where he mysteriously perished.
As for Griaznov, “We think very strongly that he was going to organize operations of destabilization, interference, spying,” French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said in a recent interview with BFM TV. “He’s now in the justice system which will be able to confirm the suspicions of the police.”
“I have at all times found myself to be a potential leader,” Griaznov stated in his resume, adding that he was a “dependable, reliable, respectable, highly trusted and valued member of a team with abilities to accomplish the goals targeted.”
Griaznov’s bosses in Moscow Center would take a very different view of that self-evaluation now that he’s sitting in a detention cell in Paris as a result of extremely careless and vodka-fueled tradecraft.
Previously, GreatGameInternational reported that as the 2024 Paris Olympics kick off, Israeli officials are sounding alarm bells about a potential terrorist threat targeting their athletes.
