Bellingcat Investigator Forced to Leave Vienna Following Security Threats

Bulgarian investigative journalist and director of the Bellingcat investigative group Christo Grozev is being forced to relocate from Austria, where he's been living for nearly 20 years, the Austrian outlet Falter reported on Feb. 2, citing its own sources.

 Grozev has reportedly been warned by his contacts in the intelligence world that he could be in danger from Russian special services if he returns, Therefore, the journalist is understood to have decided to stay in the U.S. and cancel his flight back to Austria.

 "I suspect that there are more Russian agents, informants, and henchmen in the city than policemen," Falter quotes Grozev as saying.

 Grozev is one of Bellingcat’s foremost specialists in sensational investigations about Russia, including the poisoning of Russian double agent Sergei Skrypal and his daughter in the British city of Salisbury in 2018 (it was they who established the real names of the poisoners hiding under the pseudonyms "Petrov" and "Boshirov") and the 2020 poisoning of Kremlin oppositionist Alexei Navalny on the flight in Russia.

 In January 2022, Grozev assumed the post of executive director of Bellingcat. In December of the same year, the Russian Interior Ministry put Grozev on the wanted list. After that, the journalist said that his life was in danger.

 Bellingcat and The Insider, which usually jointly conduct investigations about the Russian Federation, have been given the status of "foreign agents" and "undesirable organizations" by the Russian authorities.