Russian Spy Ring plans to kill the journalist was “beyond the imagination”

A journalist targeted by a Russian spy ring said he had a list of “assassination methods” to kill him who was “beyond any imagination”.

Christo Grozev told the BBC that the group “fantasized” of his death and spoke of using a hammer and even a “suicide bomber” to target it.

The Bulgarian, who published several presentations on Russia with the Roman colleague Dobrokhotov, said that several incidents have shown that the couple had been followed through Europe and had “breathing the neck” agents.

He spoke after three Bulgarian nationals were Benty guilty in spy last week for Russia, one of the largest foreign intelligence operations in the United Kingdom.

Mr. Grozev said that since the judicial case, Austrian police had reassured his children that this could not happen again, adding that at the start, his family had been “shocked”.

Talk to BBC Radio broadcasting of radio 4He said that the “list of assassination methods imagined” on his life “reads like a black film”.

He said that one of the ways in which the spies “fantasized to kill me” were to hire an Islamic state group “Bomber suicide bomber and have it exploded next to me in the street”.

Mr. Grozev said that there was also a plan to remove it and “send me a torture camp in Syria” while another man wearing a latex mask resembling him to Russia on a commercial flight and would be “arrested in front of the cameras for any denial”.

“Another way was to go for a death by using a hammer,” he said before adding that “the fantasy and imagination of these budding spies exceed any imagination”.

Grozev said that the failures of Russian intelligence in the past meant that espionage was “outsourced” to unprofessional spies.

He told the BBC that the fact that they used “non -professional” spies had not withdrawn “the intention of killing”. The problem was that “budding spies” did not necessarily know how to defuse situations, he added.

He said he felt lucky to be alive since he and his colleague have been followed by spies for so long and that the operation had been so well funded. He and Mr. Dobrokhotov were never looking for the EU citizens who espire them, but they expected the Russian agents to observe them, he added.

The work of the pair includes the exhibition of the role of Russia in the attacks of nervous agent against the head of the opposition of the time, Alexei Navalny in 2020 and Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in 2018.

Jan MarsalekWho instructed the spying ring on behalf of the Russian intelligence services, wrote in a message in December 2020 that Mr. Grozev was the “principal researcher in the Navalny case”.

A message sent by Marsalek to Orlin Roussev – who led the group based in the United Kingdom of a former guest house in Norfolk – said: “Personally, I find that Grozev is not a very precious target, but apparently Putin seriously hates him.”

After 2020, the espionage cell followed the two journalists across Europe, hoping them on planes, in hotels and private property.

On Friday, three spies were found guilty of spying for Russia in one of the largest “foreign intelligence operations in the United Kingdom.

In court, it appeared that the agents of the spy ring entered Grozev’s apartment in Vienna in 2022 “when my son played a computer game in his room,” said the journalist.

He added: “I just don’t want to think about what would have happened if my son decided to get out of his room during their burglary.”

Friday, Vanya Gaberova, 30, Katrin Ivanova, 33, and Tihomir Ivanchev, 39, were found guilty of conspiracy for spy. While the trio had daytime jobs as a esthetician, a health worker and a decorator, the cell they were part of the trace to kidnap and kill targets, as well as planned to trap them in the so-called Loneytraps.

The methods they used were the kind of thing you are “waiting to see in a spy novel,” said CDR of metropolitan police Dominic Murphy.