Russia declares investigative journalist Hristo Grozev wanted

Hristo Grozev, journalist of the international investigative website "Bellingcat", was declared wanted by Russia, TASS reported Monday. "He is wanted (for violating) an article of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation," the Russian Interior Ministry said in a statement. 

Founded in July 2014 by British blogger Elliot Higgins, the Netherlands-based site specialises in journalism based on the analysis of data available on the internet. Bellingcat investigated the crash in eastern Ukraine of flight MH17, which killed 298 people in 2014, the poisoning of double agent Sergei Skripal and opposition activist Alexei Navalny. More recently, the site has focused on Russia's military intervention in Ukraine.

A general comment: I have no idea on what grounds the Kremlin has put me on its "wanted list", thus I cannot provide any comments at this time. In a way it doesn't matter - for years they've made it clear they are scared of our work and would stop at nothing to make it go away. https://t.co/fd4Evbd7gJ

— Christo Grozev (@christogrozev) December 26, 2022

In late July of this year, a representative of Russia's Federal Security Service said on the air of the Rossiya-24 television channel that Grozev had participated in an attempt to hijack warplanes: a Su-24 bomber, a Su-34 fighter jet and a Tu-22 M3 supersonic missile carrier. According to them, the operation was organized by the Security Service of Ukraine, and Grozev coordinated the actions of the participants.

Grozev was born in Plovdiv in 1969 and is a Bulgarian citizen. Russia has declared Bellingcat a "foreign agent" mass media outlet and its activities have been declared "undesirable" by the Russian Prosecutor General's Office.

In September, Grozev told AFP in an interview that Bellingcat was "the Kremlin's worst nightmare".