Photo: EPA-EFE/ALEXANDER KAZAKOV / KREMLIN / POOL
The renowned investigative reporter Christo Grozev, the head of investigations at Russian independent media outlet The Insider, claimed in an interview on Friday that a Russian spy cell operating out of the UK had planned to kidnap and murder him on the direct orders of Vladimir Putin.
Speaking to journalists Yekaterina Kotrikadze and Tikhon Dzyadko of independent Russian TV channel Dozhd on their joint YouTube channel, Grozev said that the alleged spies, who are currently on trial in the UK, had planned to kidnap him and take him to Moscow, having discussed “all sorts of terrible ways” to kill him there.
“This was done on the direct orders of Putin,” Grozev stressed, adding however that he was unable to speak at length about the kidnapping plot until the trial concluded in early February, as he could still potentially be called as a witness.
According to Grozev, Putin issued the order for his murder on 14 December 2020, the same day that The Insider, Bellingcat and CNN published a joint investigation revealing that Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny had been poisoned by the FSB using the Novichok nerve agent earlier the same year.
Five Bulgarian nationals are currently on trial in London, accused of spying on individuals and places of interest to Russia over a period of nearly three years.
One of the defendants, Orlin Roussev, is accused of exchanging “thousands of messages” with suspected Russian agent Jan Marsalek, an Austrian businessman who fled to Russia after being accused of fraud, who gave instructions to Roussev to target several individuals of interest to the Kremlin, including The Insider editor-in-chief Roman Dobrokhotov.
Roussev and Marsalek exchanged messages about a possible operation targeting Grozev in 2021, the BBC reported, discussing “potentially robbing him of his laptop and phone and taking it to the Russian Embassy, burning his property, kidnapping him and taking him to Moscow, or killing him”.
Roussev has admitted the spy charge along with another Bulgarian national Bizer Dzhambazov, thought to be his second-in-command, The Telegraph reported, while the three other Bulgarian citizens have all pleaded not guilty to conspiring to spy for Russia.
