On Monday, the Russian Interior Ministry put Grozev on the wanted list. A source told Sputnik that a criminal case has been launched against Grozev for spreading fake about the Russian army.
"We inform you that, due to the fact that the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation has put Bulgarian investigative journalist Hristo Grozev on the federal wanted list, Russian Ambassador to Sofia Eleonora Mitrofanova has been summoned to a meeting at the Foreign Ministry on the first working day after the holidays," the ministry said in a statement, as quoted by the Bulgarian National Television.
According to Bulgaria's production calendar, the Christmas holidays in the country will last until December 28.
According to the statement, the ministry is intending to raise the issue of studying the Bulgarian language in the new regions of Russia, namely the Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics and the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions. According to the ministry, new territories have allegedly banned studying the Bulgarian language; however, the ministry did not provide any evidence.
The ministry is also planning to raise the issue of the alleged "removal of portraits of Bulgarian historical figures;" however, the ministry did not provide any evidence or examples as well.
Bellingcat is an investigative journalism group founded in 2014 by UK journalist Eliot Higgins, claiming to be engaged in fact-checking and open-source intelligence of military conflicts, violations of human rights, and the criminal underworld. Bellingcat has reported on the Malaysian Boeing crash, the alleged poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal, as well as the conflicts in Syria, Yemen, and Ukraine.
Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Director Sergey Naryshkin said that Bellingcat had been used to put pressure on countries, individuals, and legal entities. He noted that Moscow knew who was managing the project and added that it was not a secret that it employed special services agents.
In July, Russia's Federal Security Service reported that Grozev participated in a failed Ukrainian military intelligence operation, supervised by the special services of NATO countries, to hijack Russian air force aircraft.
Later, Grozev admitted that Ukraine had tried to recruit Russian pilots to hijack the aircraft while claiming that his role was reduced to documenting the events.