Investigative journalist Christo Grozev says Putin ordered a hit on him

Meduza.io

Investigative journalist Christo Grozev claims that Vladimir Putin personally ordered Russian intelligence agents to surveil and assassinate him. According to Grozev, the Russian president issued these orders immediately after the publication of an investigation Grozev led into Alexey Navalny’s poisoning with the nerve agent Novichok. Grozev made the accusation against Putin during a recent interview with the YouTube channel Kotrikadze Dzyadko, as noted by Agentstvo Media.

“The plans were horrifying — not just surveillance, but at the very least abduction and transportation to Moscow. At worst, a terrible death, because [the defendants in the espionage case currently being heard in a London court] were thinking up gruesome forms of death. Reading the stories in the English press, the only thing that was new for me was that it’s been proven that all of this was under personal orders from Putin himself, not some FSB or GRU general,” said Grozev.

A trial remains underway in London’s Central Criminal Court against several Bulgarian nationals accused of conspiring to spy for Russia. Specifically, case evidence indicates that fugitive former businessman Jan Marsalek and alleged accomplice Orlin Rusev collaborated with Russian intelligence, conspiring to abduct and murder Grozev and his colleagues. Prosecutors argue that Marsalek and Rusev exchanged messages in 2021 about potential actions against Grozev, including buying plane tickets near Grozev’s seat, stealing his laptop and phone and sending them to the Russian embassy, setting his property on fire, and abducting him, bringing him Moscow, and ultimately killing him.

Background

• Alleged Russian spy cell in U.K. that plotted to kill Christo Grozev also discussed kidnapping, disfiguring, and murdering investigative journalist Roman Dobrokhotov