Russia’s Interior Ministry announced it was looking for investigative journalist Hristo Grozev, Russian and Ukrainian media reported on Monday.
Grozev is a Bulgarian citizen, but works for the independent investigative journalism network Bellingkat. It is not specified what Grozev is accused of. It is only indicated that the crime is under one article of the Criminal Code of Russia. RIA Novosti quotes his source as saying Grozev is wanted for spreading false news about the Russian military.
The Bellingcat network has been declared a foreign agent in Russiaand the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office has announced that its activities are unwelcome in Russia.
In 2020, Hristo Grozev, together with Alexei Navalny’s team, investigates the poisoning of the leader of the Russian opposition and identifies the names of FSB officers involved in the crime.
Investigative journalism platform Bellingcat also investigated the 2014 Malaysian passenger plane crash over Ukraine.
In 2022, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) alleged that Grozev worked for the British foreign intelligence service MI6 and was involved in an attempted hijacking of a Russian airliner. According to the intelligence service, Ukrainian military intelligence tried to recruit Russian military pilots and persuade them to hand over the planes to Ukraine for a reward, the independent Russian news site “Meduza” recalls.
At the time, Grozev denied taking part in the operation and said the Bellingcat team was filming an investigation into how the Russian FSB and Ukrainian intelligence agencies were trying to deceive each other. According to the journalist, there was indeed an attempt to hijack planes, but it was organized not by Ukrainian intelligence, but by a group of former Ukrainian “operational workers”, recalls “Meduza”.
For now, Grozev has written on his Twitter profile that he has no idea what the Kremlin is accusing him of and therefore cannot comment on the matter. He added that it doesn’t really matter, since it has been clear for years that the Russian authorities “are afraid of our work and will stop at nothing to make it go away.”
A general comment: I have no idea on what grounds the Kremlin placed me on its “wanted list,” so I can’t provide any comment at this time. In a way it doesn’t matter: for years they’ve made it clear that they’re afraid of our work and will stop at nothing to make it go away. https://t.co/fd4Evbd7gJ
— Christo Grozev (@christogrozev) December 26, 2022
