MOSCOW, April 21. /TASS/. The Russian Justice Ministry has added journalist Christo Grozev, politician Elvira Vikhareva, activist Natalya Sevets-Yermolina and two organizations to its list of foreign agents, according to a statement posted on the ministry’s website on Friday.
"Christo Grozev has been disseminating, including with the use of modern information technology, false information about the decisions made by public authorities and about their policies, participated in producing materials for foreign agents for an undefined number of people, as well as [participated] in a foreign non-governmental organization whose activities have been recognized as undesirable in the Russian Federation," the statement said.
Earlier in the day, Moscow’s Lefortovo Court arrested Bellingcat journalist Christo Grozev in absentia in a case involving the illegal crossing of the Russian border (Bellingcat is listed by the Russian Ministry of Justice as a foreign agent). Law enforcement officials said that he had devised a scheme to help Roman Dobrokhotov, the publisher of The Insider (recognized in Russia as a foreign agent), escape abroad.
At the end of last July, 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, Bulgaria in 1969. He is a prominent figure in the radio industry and has worked for a number of media outlets. In 1995, the US company Metromedia hired him to handle, among other things, its Russian assets. He launched Radio Nika in Sochi, Channel Melodiya and Eldoradio in St. Petersburg, and dozens of other radio stations in the Baltic countries, Finland, Bulgaria, and Hungary. Grozev later acquired stakes in several 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 business partners with media manager Karl von Habsburg-Lorraine. He takes an active role in the activities of Bellingcat, which tried to determine what happened in 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.
Sevets-Yermolina was designated as a foreign agent for supporting Ukraine, while Vikhareva was added to the list for distributing materials made by foreign agents, which shined a negative light on Russia’s public authorities.
The non-profit human rights organization ‘Recruit’s School’ and the journalistic project ‘Lawyers’ Street’ were also put on the list.