Paris police chief Laurent Nunez spoke briefly about security concerns on Monday as he met with reporters outside a stadium in the south of Paris where Olympic table tennis, volleyball, handball and weightlifting events were being held.
But he offered no new insight into either investigation. In response to questions from USA Today, Nunez’s media representative later said in a WhatsApp message that the head of Paris police had nothing to say about the intercepted cables because it was outside his jurisdiction.
As the Olympics enter their first week, France is on its highest threat alert level, with cities effectively transformed into landscapes of metal security barriers and QR codes tightly restricting who can go where.
Up to 45,000 uniformed police and 10,000 soldiers form a vast security network, and security officials and experts say there may be an equal or even larger number of plainclothes officers secretly patrolling Paris’ streets.
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Sophisticated AI-enabled camera They are installed at all Olympic venues and can scan for irregularities in crowd movement, fires and other hazards.
Nuñez said he was concerned about terrorist threats, particularly Islamic terrorism, in the run up to the Olympics, but also “low-intensity threats” from radical environmentalists, left-wing extremists, pro-Palestinian movements and even forces with ties to Russia who seek to sow fear and chaos.
According to a joint investigation, France’s Le Monde and Germany’s Der Spiegel According to the weekly magazine Russian Cuisine, one such Russian was Kirill Griaznov (40), a chef who trained at Le Cordon Bleu.
Citing French investigators and Griaznov’s own emails, the media outlets said Griaznov had been living legally in France for more than 10 years before his arrest on July 19 for possession of incriminating “diplomatic documents.”
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Before becoming a haute culinary expert, Griaznov was a bespectacled lawyer who French prosecutors allege also worked for Russia’s domestic security service, the FSB, according to Le Monde and Der Spiegel.
He was arrested and charged with plotting “large-scale” destabilization at Friday’s Olympic opening ceremony, at the direction of the Kremlin’s intelligence services. French authorities have not said what the “destabilization” entailed, other than that it could have had “serious consequences.”
The outlet said France has uncovered other alleged Russian plots related to the Olympics in recent months, including a plan to line up coffins draped with the French flag and bearing the words “French Soldiers of Ukraine” in front of the Eiffel Tower — an apparent reference to suggestions by French President Emmanuel Macron that French troops might be sent to Ukraine in the future to protect the country from an unprovoked war by Russia.
Gryaznov denies any wrongdoing and faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the incident “very interesting.”
According to phone intercepts seen by Le Monde and Der Spiegel, the former Russian reality TV star revealed his true identity after being removed from a flight from Istanbul to Paris. Stranded in Bulgaria, in a drunken phone call to his Russian counterpart, he boasted that Paris would hold an “opening ceremony like no other before.”
According to an investigation by Le Monde and Der Spiegel, Griaznov was on holiday in the Black Sea when he got drunk at a seaside restaurant and let slip that he had a special mission in Paris this summer.
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