The Bulgarian investigative journalist Hristo Grosew, who lives in Austria, has been put out by Moscow to be wanted. Austria offers him personal protection, which he will accept, Grosew said. At the request of ORF.at, the Foreign Ministry knew nothing about this today. We are in the process of gathering more information.
“I’m curious what I’m being accused of,” the Russia expert, who has worked for the investigative website Bellingcat since 2015, told private Bulgarian TV channel bTV. In July, the Russian Federation’s domestic intelligence service (FSB) reported that Grozev had been involved in an operation by the Ukrainian intelligence services.
Grozev was involved in significant Bellingcat investigations that identified, among other things, the three suspects in the 2018 poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, as well as two Russian officers convicted of shooting down MH17 in 2014, and GRU operatives who behind the attempted coup in Montenegro in 2016. Grozev is also responsible for the revelations in the case of the poisoning of Alexei Navalny in 2020. In November of this year he also said in an interview that his research had uncovered those Russian programmers who programmed Russian missiles for air attacks on Ukraine.
Disappointed in Sofia
He hired a lawyer in Russia to find out why he was wanted. The investigative journalist suspects his previous work as the reason. Bellingcat’s revelations over the past five to six years have knocked out “an entire branch of Russia’s GRU,” he said.
After the Russian manhunt became known, Grozew stated that the Netherlands, Lithuania and Sweden had also offered help. “Foreign governments have contacted me, the Bulgarian one has not yet,” he said. Two days after the manhunt was issued, the Russian ambassador in Sofia, Eleonora Mitrofanova, was invited to the Foreign Ministry. He wished for a “more appropriate” reaction from the Bulgarian government, said Grozev.
