Putin Target Christo Grozev Explored In ‘Antidote’

How do you live when Vladimir Putin Meta wants you?

This is the dilemma you face Christo GruzivA man is often described as “a journalist investigation into the rock star.” The story of how it became an unwanted character – песо MS antidoteDirected by James JonesWhich just made the first global show in Cph: dox In Copenhagen.

“One of them asked me that day, how many people are on the Putin’s killing list? I was like,” I have no idea, “Jones says.

The line that Grozev exposed was to expose the identities of hundreds of Russian spies and potential gloves working in the West, as part of his work for Bellingkat, an open source investigative press group. He played a major role in achieving Bellingcat in poisoning for the year 2018 from the double Russian agent Sergey Skripal and his daughter in the United Kingdom, which led to the Kremlin link to the crime. This was just an introduction to his most subordinate achievement-the identification of Russian officials behind the poisoning close to the leader of Russian opposition Alexei Navalny In 2020.

No one watched the Oscar -winning documentary Navalny The scene in which Navalny was compensated for poisoning, as a Russian scientist Grozev made his finger as a conspiracy central. When a high -level Russian official impersonates, Navalny gets a man to acknowledge the details of the chart. Grozev is there in the room with Navalny where the amazing conversation is revealed.

Jones notes: “It is the sub -text on this film completely [the Kremlin]. This goal on the back of Christo has become engraved in the pen at that moment. “

In fact, this was during the appearance of the documentary Navalny On the Oscar tour that Grozev learned that the Kremlin announced that he was a wanted man.

“I have described it as a way,” says Bulgarian journalist born on the deadline. “She intentionally called for this because it was the closest analogy at the time. Since the way Russia declared, it had no other pragmatic purpose but to make others who want to provide a interest to Putin, to receive after that.”

This was not just a threat of lethargy. Gruziv was visiting New York in 2023 when US intelligence officials warned him of returning to his home in Vienna, because the “red team” was expecting to arrive in Austria with plans to kill or kidnap him. It was not long before, the UK authorities obtained the winds of three Bulgarians after Grozev all over Europe with the intention of extracting it. Catherine Ivanova, Vania Gabrova, and Thamir Ivanov – Bulgarian Citizens in London – were arrested in February 2023 and were accused of spying.

“There was a lot of evidence, 200,000 text messages … between the commissioners [of the plot] From Moscow and the espionage team, it took nearly a year from the prosecutors and the police to go to them, after arrest, after the arrest, [investigators] Did you discover new things and call me from time to time, “Oh, did you know that this happened?” Or “Where were you on this date?”

Only last month, Ivanova, Jabirova and Ivanchiv were convicted of a British conspiracy court to spy.

“This was a high -level spying with large financial rewards for those involved in the spying The group has acted together under the leadership [confessed Bulgarian spy] Orlene Rousseff, to spy on individuals and prominent sites on behalf of Russia using advanced methods. “

This plot failed against Grozev, but it may never learn the full conditions of his father’s sudden death in Austria. His body was discovered in his home outside Vienna. The cause of death is not specified. Near the end of the shooting on antidote“I have faced pictures and messages from the spying episode [Ivanova, Gaberova, and Ivanchev and associates] He says: “Where it became clear that they were also assigned to survey my father, and there was a picture … from the spies they took a personal photo in front of my father’s apartment with an arrow indicating the balcony, saying,” Enter from here. “

There are comic elements of the spyware practiced by the Bulgarian conspirators – besides failure to delete integrated text messages, that personal image, and other evidence of their phones. “It was also almost surreal and funny, how we can match their text messages – which were only available to prosecutors – for the public data they left, such as baking crumbs,” Grozev notes. “Some spies left Google reviews to the places they went and complained about the quality of hotels, cafes or food because they were literally breathing in my neck at the same time.”

Grozev’s lifting moments may help the constant threat of his life. “It is normalized after time,” he says. “Therefore, you no longer feel shocked, you are no longer tense. You can sleep normally.”

After the Austrian authorities told Grozev that they could not protect him, he had stayed in New York. It was good while Biden was president. But with Trump’s return in office, he can no longer be safe in the United States as a foregone.

“The new shock comes, which is, suddenly, the country that gave you asylum, and the safe space is now compatible with the enemy and is it safe anymore? And what is the next destination?” to antidote“It is a kind of fleeing films in some way, but it includes a journalist,” he says.

Grozev is now as head of investigations for the sake of the informed. In presenting questions and answers after the first global presentation antidote In Copenhagen, he said he would continue to follow his work as long as he continues to enjoy the support of his wife and two children. They supported his journalistic mission despite the grave risk of his well -being.

In Cph: dox, the first global show site antidote It was not revealed even before the event. Security scale.

“It is strange that the relative safety is that six months ago I had doubts if I should be in Copenhagen,” Gruziv said to the deadline. “But now there is no doubt that the United States is no longer safe. Everything is, every risk assessment, relative.”