A Russian dissident only discovered that he was being targeted by a UK-based spy ring when he read his name in the news, The Telegraph can reveal.

Kirill Kachur was being hunted by a team of Bulgarian spies tasked with kidnapping him and sending him back to Moscow, either dead or alive, for a price of £700,000.

In his first interview, given over an encrypted line while still in hiding, the lawyer told The Telegraph that he only found out that he was a target of their plot when he read his name in the British press.

His story can be told for the first time after the spy “minions” who were following him on the ground were found guilty at the Old Bailey on Friday.

They had been tasked to hunt for Mr Kachur by Jan Marsalek, the fugitive boss of Germany payments processing company Wirecard, who was running the operation on behalf of the Russian secret services, the court heard.

Mr Kachur evaded the team but said that he still feared for his life as the international arm of Russia’s Federal Security Service’s (FSB) has “long tentacles”, with agents in every country.

They used foreigners such as the Bulgarian spy ring so that if they were detained, they could not reveal the inner workings of the FSB or give evidence against their agents, he explained.

His concerns were echoed by Commander Dominic Murphy, the head of the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command which led the investigation.

Mr Murphy said that as the “UK becomes a more hostile environment” for Russian spies, they had seen an increasing threat from the “use of proxies” such as the Bulgarians to carry out their espionage.