Investigations correspondent
A journalist targeted by a Russian spy cell run from a former guest house in Norfolk has said he thinks Russian President Vladimir Putin personally ordered the operation against him.
Roman Dobrokhotov, editor-in-chief of The Insider, was followed through Europe by Bulgarian spies who were working for Moscow – three of whom were convicted on Friday.
Dobrokhotov told the BBC: “I’m very lucky to be alive”.
The Russian national believes he and his fellow investigative journalist, the Bulgarian Christo Grozev, were targeted because of their exposés on Russia. They revealed Russia’s role in a string of deadly incidents, including the nerve agent attacks in Salisbury in 2018 and on the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in 2020.
In December 2020, on the day that investigative group Bellingcat published its exposé on the Navalny poisoning, the man who directed the Russian spy cell sent a message saying: “We’d be interested in a Bulgarian guy working for Bellingcat Christo Grozev.”
Jan Marsalek, who instructed the spy ring on behalf of the Russian intelligence services, wrote that Grozev was the “lead investigator in the Navalny case”.
His friend and fellow target Dobrokhotov said this was the moment when they became a major focus, as Putin was so disturbed by what had been revealed.
“I think that it was Putin directly,” he said.
“In this dictatorship, you would never take responsibility on your own to do such a political stuff. You will always have a direct order from the president.”
A message sent by Marsalek to fellow spy Orlin Roussev – who ran the UK-based group from a former guest house in Norfolk – demonstrated inside knowledge of Putin’s thinking. He wrote: “Personally I find Grozev not to be a very valuable target but apparently Putin seriously hates him.”
After 2020, the spy cell followed Grozev and Dobrokhotov throughout Europe, spying on them on airplanes, in hotels and in private properties.
They discussed kidnapping and even killing the men. There was talk of smuggling Dobrokhotov out of the UK in a small boat from the Norfolk coast, after which he would be taken back to Russia.
Dobrokhotov said it was clear this would have resulted in his death.
It was in January 2023, the month before police arrested members of the cell in the UK, that Dobrokhotov said he was “warned that I shouldn’t leave the country because it can be dangerous”.
He had not realised that he was being followed by the Bulgarian spies, who got so near to him on one flight that they saw the Pin code for his mobile phone.
He thinks the police action sends a signal.
“Vladimir Putin doesn’t understand messages in words, only in actions,” Dobrokhotov said.
“So he understands messages like, for example, Ukraine got long-range missiles. That’s a message that he can understand.
“And when his spies are arrested and imprisoned for a big sentence, that’s also a message that he can understand.”
He thinks the use of Bulgarians working in normal jobs shows the limits of Russian espionage after so many professional spies were expelled from the West, but that spy cells like the Bulgarian one are no less dangerous.
Speaking about what motivates him, Dobrokhotov said he wants “to change Russia” because he does not want to live in a country that “kills people just because they’re doing journalism or because they are criticising the government”.
He said that “while we are existing, it is very difficult for Vladimir Putin to feel strength inside the country” and that “we will be someone who he will try to eliminate for the rest of his life”.
“We’re in a situation that only some of us will survive, either we or Vladimir Putin and his team.”
On Friday Vanya Gaberova, 30, Katrin Ivanova, 33, and Tihomir Ivanchev, 39, were found guilty of conspiracy to spy, while Roussev, 47, and Biser Dzhambazov, 43, had previously admitted the same charge. A sixth Bulgarian, Ivan Stoyanov, 34, pled guilty to spying. Ivanova was also convicted of possessing multiple false identity documents.
