In early August, Pablo González was taken from a jail in Poland and flown to Moscow on a airplane carrying Russian deep-cover brokers, hackers and a hitman for the FSB intelligence service.
The group was met on the airport by a army guard, purple carpet and Vladimir Putin – thanking them for his or her loyal service to the nation.
Video footage from that evening in Moscow exhibits Mr González smiling as he shakes palms with President Putin on the foot of the airplane steps. Black-bearded, with a shaven and glossy head, he’s carrying a Star Wars T-shirt that declares “Your Empire Wants You”.
Identified by his Russian buddies as “Pablo, the Basque journalist”, the 42-year-old was a part of a main prisoner swap for Westerners held in Russian jails and Russian dissidents.
Within the group freed by Vladimir Putin had been two opposition activists Mr González was accused of spying on.
He’d been arrested in Poland in 2022 for alleged espionage.
“I acquired my first suspicions in 2019. It simply dawned on me,” Zhanna Nemtsova tells me, within the first interview she’s given in regards to the man who spied on her.
The 2 met in 2016 at an occasion in regards to the investigation into her father’s homicide. Boris Nemtsov, a staunch opponent of Vladimir Putin, had been assassinated a 12 months earlier, proper beside the Kremlin.
His daughter – herself a vocal Putin critic – finally moved to Europe for security.
That day in Strasbourg, Pablo González requested Ms Nemtsova for an interview for a newspaper within the Basque area. She refused, at first. However the journalist – Spanish, with Russian roots – step by step turned one thing of a fixture in her circle: attending occasions, taping interviews, mingling.
Wanting again, Ms Nemtsova remembers turning into cautious.
“I shared my suspicions with a few individuals and so they had been like, ‘No, that is nonsense!’ Folks regard you as loopy for those who convey up some issues. They’ll assume you paranoid.
“However I used to be completely proper.”
That’s why she’s determined to talk out brazenly now.
“I need different individuals to be very cautious,” Zhanna Nemtsova explains. “The risk is just not one thing you possibly can simply learn in books or watch on the films. It’s very shut.”
Mr González was solely formally charged with espionage per week after he left Poland, flown to Moscow as a part of the August prisoner swap. By then, he’d spent nicely over two years locked up, awaiting trial.
All alongside, Polish prosecutors have deflected questions in regards to the case and the method. Intelligence sources stay tight-lipped. The Polish lawyer who first represented Mr González says he can’t remark.
By the point of his arrest, Mr González had been dwelling in Warsaw for no less than three years, a lot of that point along with his Polish girlfriend. He was a contract journalist, working principally for Spanish-language press.
He reported from the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh and travelled to Ukraine. In some unspecified time in the future, he joined a media journey to Syria run by the Russian defence ministry, all the time very selective about who it takes.
It was in 2022 that he was detained, briefly, in Ukraine, although the SBU safety service there gained’t reveal any particulars. Then, on 28 February, Mr González was arrested in Przemysl, japanese Poland, the place he was a part of the media pack masking the beginning of Russia’s all-out conflict on Ukraine.
The set off for the arrest has not been made public.
Following Mr González’s 2022 arrest in Poland, there was a marketing campaign in Spain for his launch [Reuters]Final 12 months, Zhanna Nemtsova was proven proof of Mr González’s exercise as a part of the felony investigation.
“I’ve little question he was a spy. I’m certain, 100%,” she advised me this week.
Ms Nemtsova is banned by a non-disclosure settlement from sharing particulars of the proof. Because of this, she’s needed to watch individuals proceed to profess that Mr González is harmless.
“It’s scary. We shouldn’t downplay this. These individuals don’t have any ethical scruples. They regard you as their enemies,” she warns, referring to Russian intelligence brokers.
Though Ms Nemtsova says she by no means trusted Mr González as a real good friend, he did handle to insert himself into her circle. He was informing on the group from the beginning, she says.
“He may be very charming, he is aware of the right way to talk with individuals, make them really feel comfy.”
Her ex-husband, Pavel Elizarov, agrees. He and Mr González had been “fairly shut for some time frame”. He would go to him in Spain, discuss politics and do tourism. He launched others to his good friend.
Ilya Yashin, one other outstanding activist, went to soccer matches with Mr González in Spain and even coat procuring. When Mr González was launched within the prisoner swap, Mr Yashin was one of many trades: he’d been imprisoned in Russia for condemning the conflict on Ukraine.
Vadim Prokhorov, the Nemtsov household lawyer, remembers one other element.
“He drank like a Russian,” Mr Prokhorov advised me. “He might maintain his drink with out falling over. We should always have suspected him again then!”
We did ask to interview Mr González through his spouse, who lives in Spain and has been his most avid supporter. Up to now, he hasn’t replied.
As an alternative, he appeared on Kremlin-controlled tv, filmed wandering by way of a Moscow suburb, reminiscing in excellent Russian about sledging on cardboard as a baby.
He was born, he explains, Pavel Rubtsov – nonetheless the title in his Russian passport.
He turned Pablo González when he moved to Spain along with his mom in 1991. His grandfather had been evacuated to the USSR throughout the Spanish Civil Struggle, so Pavel and his mom had been entitled to Spanish citizenship.
All of it made him best recruitment materials for Russian intelligence, however the state TV report declared that Poland had no proof of that.
“They threatened and pressured me,” Mr González says, in his extraordinarily deep voice. “I requested, ‘What did I do?’ and so they mentioned, ‘You recognize.’ However I didn’t.”
No-one I’ve interviewed has characterised Mr González as a Putin fan, though Zhanna Nemtsova says she and he had been on “totally different sides of the political spectrum”.
“I didn’t get any pro-Russian vibe off him,” a Polish contact mentioned.
However on Russian TV, Mr González is kind of clearly excited as he describes assembly “Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin” at Vnukovo airport in Moscow.
Coming down the airplane steps, he says, he was “practising” all the way in which the right way to greet his president. “I wished to make certain it was a robust, manly handshake,” Mr González explains, with an enormous grin.
The BBC has not had direct entry to any of the fabric on this case. However now we have interviewed dependable sources whose accounts, taken collectively, reveal that Pablo González was informing on quite a lot of individuals in Europe.
When he was detained, Polish investigators found stories detailing the actions, contacts and profiles of individuals ranging over a number of years.
Russian opposition activists had been one goal, together with these near Zhanna Nemtsova. There’s a report on no less than one Polish citizen, in addition to college students of a journalism summer season college run by Ms Nemtsova. Investigators additionally discovered emails that Mr González had copied from a laptop computer he had been lent.
We don’t know who these stories had been despatched to, however they checklist bills incurred in gathering data, together with transport prices. “There have been a number of particulars, together with what they ate for lunch,” the BBC was advised.
In some circumstances, that supply says, questions have been added, apparently by a superior searching for clarification or extra element.
One of many stories considerations the Russian defence ministry press journey to Syria that Mr González went on, although its predominant focus is to criticise the ministry for poor organisation of the tour.
The official cost sheet accuses Mr González of espionage – particularly, offering intelligence, spreading disinformation and “conducting operational reconnaissance” for Russian army intelligence, the GRU.
We don’t know what different proof there is perhaps, however the worth of what he gathered on the Russian opposition is unclear.
I used to be advised that some stories are “sloppy” and embody data taken from the web. “Some had been actually wordy, with 10 pages as an alternative of 1. Most likely to get extra funding,” the supply thought.
The primary half matches the feedback of an in depth good friend of Mr González who advised me he was “a bit lazy”.
The BBC additionally understands that the accuracy of the stories deteriorates notably after 2018, with fewer notes or corrections by a senior officer, or handler. It could be coincidental, however that’s when massive numbers of Russian intelligence belongings had been expelled from Europe, after double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter had been poisoned within the British metropolis of Salisbury.
And though Russian activists who socialised with “Pablo, the Basque journalist” had been shocked to be taught he’d betrayed them, they doubt he had entry to delicate data.
“We aren’t within the behavior of sharing this data with anybody, as we’ve all the time recognized we might face such issues,” Zhanna Nemtsova confirms.
“Every part we mentioned to him, we’d say to anybody else in public,” opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza advised me after his launch as a part of the identical prisoner swap.
Vladimir Kara-Murza was among the many Russian dissidents who had been placed on a flight to Bonn [Reuters]One supply sought to downplay the case in opposition to Mr González, describing the contents of the stories as “not severe”. However Ms Nemtsova – whose father was murdered in Moscow for his politics – strongly disagrees.
“His phrases had been essential for the GRU [Russian military intelligence]. They could have led to severe penalties. This doesn’t recommend that Pablo himself would do some injury. However they produce other individuals who do that.
“That’s why that is severe.”
When Mr González was detained, there was a flurry of protest over accusing a journalist of espionage. The EU had important considerations in regards to the rule of legislation below the earlier Polish authorities, whereas teams equivalent to Reporters With out Borders known as for Mr González to be delivered to trial, allowed to defend himself in opposition to any proof, or be let loose.
“I assumed possibly they had been mistaken in regards to the arrest,” a Polish journalist who knew Mr González remembers his personal preliminary doubts. “I assumed possibly it was simply to indicate the federal government had been doing stuff about Russia.”
As Mr González was by no means convicted, his staunchest supporters nonetheless argue that Poland has “acquired away” with an injustice. However most had been silenced by final month’s prisoner swap and the ceremonial welcome in Moscow.
Russian dissident tells BBC he thought he would die in ‘Putin’s jail’
The federal government in Madrid has been notably quiet on the case, in public, from the beginning.
“However that prisoner alternate, and González’s reception, are the reply to all the things,” one official there advised me. As she put it, it could be very odd for Vladimir Putin – crusher of the free media – to “save” a mere journalist.
Weeks after Mr González was returned to Moscow, the spy scandal remains to be inflicting complications for Ms Nemtsova.
In 2018 and 2019, the inspiration she arrange after her father’s killing invited “Pablo, the Basque journalist” to Prague to provide a lecture on conflict reporting. The summer season college for younger journalists was hosted by Charles College.
Now Czech media have declared that academia has been “infiltrated”, prompting a PhD scholar to put in writing a dramatic letter to the college Arts School, warning that the Nemtsov Basis might pose a safety risk “to all the Czech Republic”.
The scholar, Aliaksandr Parshankou, instructed suspending a Russian Research MA, supported by Ms Nemtsova’s group, pending an investigation. He advised the BBC the course was “by definition a degree of attraction for Putin” and known as for it to hold a warning that the protection of scholars “can’t be assured”.
Ms Nemtsova calls the scholar’s claims “groundless and manipulative” and he admits he has no precise proof. However the basis is a part of the legacy of Ms Nemtsova’s father and he or she fears the purpose is to “kick us out of the school”.
“I’m a sufferer of espionage,” she protested. “It might occur to individuals like me, however that doesn’t imply we characterize a risk to the Czech Republic.”
Pablo González was flown again to Moscow by Russia, the place his passport identifies him as Pavel Rubtsov.
Spain doesn’t deprive individuals of citizenship, even these suspected of espionage. However Mr González must reapply for his Spanish passport.
The probabilities of him heading there appear slim whereas there’s a case for espionage open within the EU. It’s unclear how lengthy that case is perhaps left pending.
As for visiting his sons there, an official in Madrid was clear: “They’re free to go and see him in Moscow.”
As soon as an intelligence agent is unmasked, their profession choices and actions are restricted.
Different Russians who’ve adopted the same path have ended up starring on state-controlled TV. Maybe Pablo will restyle himself as Pavel, and discover himself praising Vladimir Putin much more.
As for Zhanna Nemtsova, she admits she’s much more cautious about who she offers with.
“Now I all the time take into consideration safety,” she advised me. “I did take into consideration my safety earlier than, as a result of I left Russia. However I didn’t take into consideration safety in Europe. Now in fact, I do. And I’m cautious.”