MOSCOW, April 21. /TASS/. Moscow’s Lefortovo Court has arrested Bellingcat journalist Christo Grozev in absentia in a case of the illegal crossing the Russian border (Bellingcat is listed by the Russian Ministry of Justice as a foreign agent).

"The court chose a preventive measure against Grozev. He is to be detained for a period of two months. The countdown shall begin from the moment of his extradition to Russian territory, namely from the moment he crosses the Russian state border and is handed over to the escort service of the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) or from the moment of his detention on Russian territory," the court’s spokeswoman said.

Grozev was charged under part 1 of article 322 of the Criminal Code (illegal crossing of the state border of the Russian Federation). The maximum penalty under this article is up to two years in prison. He is also charged in absentia with organizing the escape abroad of Roman Dobrokhotov, the publisher of The Insider (recognized in Russia as a foreign agent), law enforcement officials told TASS on Friday.

"The reason for Grozev's arrest in absentia was the accusation that he assisted Dobrokhotov, a witness in a libel case, in illegally crossing the Russian border," the official said.

At the end of July last year, Russia’s federal security service (FSB) told the Rossiya-24 TV channel that Grozev had been involved in an attempt to steal combat planes: a Sukhoi-24 bomber, a Sukhoi-34 fighter and a Tupolev-22 M3 supersonic missile carrier. This operation was masterminded by the Ukrainian security service SBU. Grozev took the lead here. In December 2022, the Russian Interior Ministry put him on a wanted list.

Grozev was born in Plovdiv in 1969. He has worked for local radio stations and other media outlets. In 1995, the US company Metromedia hired him for handling, among other things, its Russian assets. He launched Radio Nika in Sochi, Channel Melodiya and Eldoradio in St. Petersburg, and dozens more radio stations in the Baltic countries, Finland, Bulgaria, and Hungary. Grozev later acquired stakes in Russian radio stations from Metromedia. In 2006, he sold all of his media projects in Russia. In 2016, the FSB revoked his permit to stay in Russia. Grozev is a business partner of media manager Karl von Habsburg-Lorraine. He takes an active part in the activities of Bellingcat, which tried to establish the circumstances of the alleged poisoning of blogger Alexey Navalny and covered a number of other high-profile incidents. Russia’s Prosecutor-General’s office found Bellingcat’s activity in Russia undesirable.