NAVALNY, BELLINGCAT & THE FIFTH COLUMN IN THE FSB
A Dispatch from the Stalkerzone
PUSHING BACK AGAINST WESTERN DISINFORMATION
NAVALNY, BELLINGCAT & THE FIFTH COLUMN IN THE FSB
February 14, 2021
Navalny And Others Like Him Are Not Politicians Or Fighters. They Are Puppets. We Armed Ourselves With Evidence And Made The First Attempt To Understand Whose Hands Control These “Dolls”. By The Way, Some Of These Arms Are Covered With The Sleeves Of The Uniforms Of The Russian Federal Security Service. So Who Is Behind The “Investigations” That Were Supposed To “Shake Russia”? Whose Agents Were Navalny And His Associates? The Answers Are In Our Investigation.
Tsargrad continues a series of investigations into Aleksey Navalny. This time we will talk about his colleagues – journalists of the scandalous website of anti-Russian “revelations” Bellingcat, as well as about close ties with The Insider. From the documents we found, we learned that influential and experienced agents, professionals of conducting hybrid war against Russia, now stood up for Navalny. However, today’s story casts a big shadow in the past, where there was a place for “werewolves in uniform”, and hackers, and big money from overseas.
We were not surprised to see not only the “exposé” of the Bulgarian journalist Christo Grozev on Navalny, but also them together, calling, probably, a fake FSB employee. The one who confused Omsk and Tomsk, and also confessed to the strange interest of the Russian security forces in the underwear of the opposition leader. After all, “Novichok“ was allegedly also applied to it. So who are Grozev and his team? Who sponsors the Bellingcat investigators and what does Aleksey Navalny have to do with it? About everything in order.
Buckets Of Dirt
Over the past two months, several information plantings about the case with the “poisoning” of Navalny have appeared online at the same time. The most resonant is the joint “investigation” of The Insider, Bellingcat and CNN with the participation of Der Spiegel.
The Leader And Main Coordinator Was Christo Grozev, As We Are Kindly Told On The Bellingcat Website.
Grozev is well known in the west for his Bellingcat work. In fact, this British organisation was created [in Orwellian fashion] as a website for exposing the “propaganda of Russia”. Initially, Bellingcat employees did an investigation from which it follows that allegedly Russia was responsible for the downing of the Malaysian Boeing in Donbass.
Grozev in 2014, through all his resources, exposed Russia as an “aggressor” who attacked Ukraine. He published a large number of fakes about the presence of Russian military personnel there in characteristic camouflage, about the movement of equipment and soldiers. Even later, Grozev did not let up and did not hestitate to spread rumours that Russia was going to attack Ukraine soon with large forces. In 2020, on his Twitter, for example, he published, without a reference to sources, a certain video about the passage of a column of military equipment in the Rostov region. According to Grozev, this then indicated that Russia was preparing for an attack.
In 2016, Grozev organised a campaign to accuse Moscow of “attempting a coup in Montenegro”. It is noteworthy that this lie was not believed, first of all, by the residents of the republic themselves. They believed that Grozev was paid by then-Prime Minister Milo Đukanović to “warm up” his approval rating before the election.
Then there were the Bellingcat “investigations” into the poisoning of the Skripals, where the use of Novichok was allegedly confirmed. It said that the suspects worked for the GRU, and so on.
After that, Grozev actively promoted the position of the American Democrats through his resources, claiming that Donald Trump, who came to power in the US at that time, was also a protege of Moscow and almost personally of Vladimir Putin.
In a word, Grozev everywhere, at every step, defamed Russia as much as he could. He was engaged in this systematically, and one can not deny its scope. After all, at the instigation of Grozev, this propaganda was actively spread by the western press, after which this information poisoned the minds of Americans and Europeans. Let’s look at Christo Grozev in more detail.
The Story Of A Propagandist
Christo Grozev was born in 1969 in Plovdiv and since his teens was interested in two things – radio and democracy. Not surprisingly, he went to study at the American University in Bulgaria (AUBG), one of the key forges of “democratic” cadres in the Balkans. There is no doubt about the ideological education of students, because 80% of the teaching staff of the university was represented by Americans.
The most interesting thing is the financing of this university. The first sponsor was the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The university’s website says that USAID funds the university through the Office of American Schools and Hospitals Abroad (ASHA). The grants amounted to more than $11 million.
ASHA, in turn, is an integral part of USAID, and this information can be easily found on the organisation’s website.
The second sponsor is the George Soros Open Society Foundation, which has allocated at least $36 million to the university. Christo Grozev, after reading an article about himself in Tsargrad back in 2017, was ironic about being called an “agent of Soros”. But it’s hard to deny the facts about the funding he received from Soros, even when he was studying at a university he sponsored.
The third sponsor is no less interesting. This is the America for Bulgaria Foundation (ABF), which has allocated at least $22 million to the American University to pay scholarships and support students (information from the university’s website). The ABF’s own website says that it was founded in 1991 by the US Congress and USAID.
In 2012, the anniversary issue of the official journal of the university “AUBG Today” was published, dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the university. The cover features a photo with George Soros, the special envoy of US President George H. W. Bush, Elaine Chao and the first President of independent Bulgaria, Zhelyu Zhelev. In short, it is difficult to imagine something more American in Bulgaria than this university. In such a place, Christo Grozev, who denies his ties with the money of the US and Soros, was educated.
Kluge is known all over the world as a tycoon who bought up media assets in different countries. However, a number of no-no sources reported him as a high-ranking American intelligence officer. As the journalist Oleg Lurie told us, Kluge was responsible for the US intelligence agencies during World War II for the export of German prisoners of war, including even Wernher von Braun, who were valuable to the Americans. The goal was to create for Washington the maximum superiority over the USSR in the nuclear race. At the same time, a number of sources report that the division led by Kluge P.O. Box 1142 (District of Columbia) is famous for its sadistic torture of prisoners.
John Kluge died in 2010, but we managed to find an interesting document – a transcript of a fragment of a recording of a US Congress meeting, which contains an appeal to honour the memory of the deceased secret US intelligence officer John Kluge. Here is the most interesting quote from the document:
By the way, the western media persistently hide Kluge’s affiliation with American intelligence. They try not to trumpet about it. According to Forbes, until 1991, Kluge was considered the richest man in the US, his fortune exceeded $5 billion. A year before his death, he was ranked 35th in the Forbes ranking. The Times of London, for example, tells us that Kluge, also known as “Mr. Midas”, is simply a billionaire who founded America’s first independent media empire. But we can imagine how “independent” a career US intelligence officer could actually be.
Thus, we can say that Christo Grozev immediately after university chose a career as a propagandist and entered into a closer relationship with the American intelligence agencies, starting to work for Kluge. Moreover, Grozev, on the personal orders of his boss, went to open a network of propaganda radio stations in Russia.
One of Metromedia’s projects in Russia was, for example, “Eldoradio” (Radio Katyusha CJSC), which was opened in 1996. According to the register of radio stations for that period, the general director of “Eldoradio” was Grozev himself. An extract from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities for this radio station can be obtained even today, but after the change of owners in 2003, the CJSC turned into a joint-stock company and was re-registered with the assignment of a new tax code.
The newspaper “Delovoy Peterburg“ also wrote about Grozev as a general director, noting the success of the radio station. Of course, because the station had no problems with financing.
Our colleagues from the investigative publication FLB found an indication of Grozev as the “first person” in “Radio Katyusha” CJSC.
In addition to “Eldoradio”, Grozev also launched “Channel Melody” in St. Petersburg and “Radio Nika” in Sochi. In the 2000s, Kluge noticed Grozev’s zeal and made him a top manager of the entire eastern European wing of Metromedia. This division of the corporation was engaged in broadcasting in Russia, the Baltic states, Finland, Bulgaria, and Hungary. In total, Grozev managed 26 radio stations in nine countries.
However, the network of “democratic” propaganda mouthpieces in our country eventually collapsed. As Grozev himself later stated, Vladimir Putin allegedly personally destroyed Metromedia’s business in Russia. In 1999, Viktor Ivanov, who had served in the KGB Department of the USSR for Leningrad and the Leningrad Region since 1977, became interested in the activities of Metromedia. In 1994, deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, Putin appointed Ivanov head of the administrative bodies of the City Hall. In 1996, Anatoly Sobchak lost the mayoral election, Ivanov left politics and headed “Teleplus” CJSC, which was owned by one of Metromedia’s daughters. Apparently, it was there that Ivanov saw the whole “spy”background of Kluge and Grozev’s activities in Russia.
In January 2000, Vladimir Putin became acting president of Russia and appointed Ivanov as deputy head of the Presidential Administration for personnel, and as Grozev states, then his radio stations were subjected to “a decisive attack from the Putin team”. A number of sources report that the radio stations of Grozev had non-transparent accounting, and Metromedia itself evaded paying taxes. For example, in 2004, the Georgian authorities accused the son-in-law of the former President of Georgia Eduard Shevardnadze, Giya Dzhohtaberidze, who was the founder and co-owner of the mobile phone company “Magticom”, part of Metromedia, of corruption.
After the collapse of Metromedia shares in the late 2000s, the company started to sell off its assets in the CIS. Grozev also said that he considers Vladimir Putin his personal enemy, as he allegedly “squeezed” his business. Then the Bulgarian propagandist, apparently, decided to start “taking revenge on Putin” in a big way.
Grozev then goes to a new sponsor – the heir to the royal throne of Austria, Karl Habsburg-Lorraine, and later becomes a personal financial adviser to Habsburg. Grozev persuades him to invest in the creation of a “democratic” radio station in Ukraine.
The entire “office” was then unexpectedly “handed over” on his Facebook by Oleg Khavich – the former head of the information bloc of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine. In 2016, he posted a photo of himself standing next to Karl Habsburg and Christo Grozev. Khavich called the latter a “financial adviser” to Habsburg. Supporters of Austria-Hungary in the comments could not restrain themselves and exulted: “Galicia is waiting for the return of its emperor!”
What a wonderful company, you might say. Thank you to Mr. Khavich for this photo, with which we were able to confirm the close connection between Grozev and Habsburg. After all, in 2014, Metromedia bought in Ukraine “Gala Radio”, which in 2015 received the pretentious name “EU Radio”. Grozev assumed that the station would become the mouthpiece of European “democracy”. By the way, the radio completely abandoned Russian music, so as not to promote the “aggressor country”.
The Metromedia empire eventually collapsed around the world, and its last assets were sold off in Georgia. But Grozev did not care, because then he went to work at Bellingcat, where he again fell down before the overseas feeding trough.
Bellingcat, FSB, The Insider, Hackers, Intelligence Agencies And Big Money
Let’s move on to the most interesting part of our investigation. As many may recall, in early 2017, there was a loud scandal in the FSB: the head of the 2nd department of the Central Information Security Department of the FSB Sergey Mikhailov and his deputy Dmitry Dokuchaev were arrested.
On February 26th, 2019, the Moscow District Military Court sentenced Sergey Mikhailov and associated Kaspersky Lab employee Ruslan Stoyanov to 22 and 14 years in prison, respectively, finding them guilty under Article 275 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation “State Treason”.
As was established by the investigation, in 2011 Mikhailov took advantage of the fact that he was head of FSB Central Information Security Department and became a real digital mafia, or more simply, the leader of a cyber-criminal group. It was Mikhailov who “protected” the infamous Ukrainian hackers from “Anonymous International”. This group was also called “Shaltay Boltay”. Important: the investigation proved Mikhailov’s guilt and his receipt of money from the US intelligence agencies.
“Shaltay Boltay” since 2014 settled in Kiev, boldly opposed Russia and started to do powerful leaks of information so that the west could use them to accuse Moscow of aggression. By the way, it was “Shaltay Boltay” who launched the myth of “Russian hackers” at the same time. But where was this anti-Russian hysteria picked up from?
It was The Insider. Yes, yes, the same one who, in conjunction with Christo Grozev, conducted the latest investigations on Navalny, and then the publication published the plums of “Shaltay“. For example, about the fake hacking of Vladislav Surkov’s mail, whose letters allegedly prove Russia’s “aggression” against Ukraine. 
Thus, we stretch a logical thread: the money of the CIA and the State Department – Sergey Mikhailov – “Shaltay Boltay” – The Insider. Of course, Christo Grozev did not pass by these plums and joyfully picked up all such messages discrediting Russia. The chain thus extends to both Bellingcat and Grozev.
All the links in this chain have one thing in common – communication with the US intelligence agencies and receiving money from them through the State Department structures, as well as all sorts of “democratic” organisations sponsored by Soros. This is confirmed by a number of sources. Firstly, in the west, there are also unbiased media [actually alternative independent media]. The website Mint Press News in October 2018 published an article about the dirty financing of Bellingcat. Here is a quote from the publication’s article:
“For instance, Bellingcat regularly works with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which – according to the late journalist Robert Parry – ‘engages in ‘investigative journalism’ that usually goes after governments that have fallen into disfavor with the United States and then are singled out for accusations of corruption.’ OCCRP is notably funded by USAID and the controversial George Soros-funded Open Society Foundations.”
The editor-in-chief of The Insider, Roman Dobrokhotov, confirmed in January 2021 in the film of Aleksey Pivovarov’s YouTube channel “Editorial” that his publication also received money from OCCRP. Here is a video fragment where Dobrokhotov speaks about this quite openly.
Now let’s see where the money comes from for OCCRP itself? This is indeed again the Open Society Foundation of George Soros, this is again USAID and even the US State Department itself. This is stated in the appropriate section of the OCCRP website.
And now let’s give the floor to Christo Grozev himself, who is trying to assure us that he paid for the investigation of Navalny out of his own pocket. Grozev admitted that the information in the “investigation” was “gray”, and Bellingcat is allegedly so transparent that it does not pay for such “leaks”. Here is a snippet of the video from the right minute.
[An Anglo-American Imperialist Disinformation Machine]
Grozev stammered and even clutched his head when he said that the Bellingcat grant-givers are state structures. He immediately corrected himself, saying that the money in the organisation is allegedly coming from some private companies. But we now know where the money came from.
But that’s not all. We managed to find documents confirming that the British MI6 and the London Institute for Statecraft are also involved in financing Bellingcat employees. We are talking about an organisation called Integrity Initiative.
Integrity Initiative is the largest anti-Russian information and lobbying company in history, with central Anglo-Saxon support and a huge aggregate budget. Among other things, its activities are aimed at interfering in the internal affairs of other countries. The members of the organisation are politicians, scientists, officials, teachers, military personnel, activists, bloggers and journalists. Such, for example, as Grozev, Dobrokhotov and Navalny.
In 2018, Anonymous hackers broke into the servers of this organisation and posted some of the internal documents. Among them are a list of the organisation’s members by cluster in different countries, a list of operations, fees, requests for seminars, a manual on how to correctly lie about “Russian propaganda”, how to interpret the “Skripal case” and the MH-17 disaster. At the end of 2018, Tsargrad, as part of a special project, considered the activities of this British network of agents of influence in Europe. Now the documents of the Integrity Initiative can be found on the website fdik.org.
The documents also found something that indicates the connection of Bellingcat with Integrity Initiative. Namely, requests for payment of royalties to Christo Grozev’s closest assistant, Bellingcat author Dan Kaszeta, for his articles on toxic warfare agents and “nerve agents” (first document, second and third). It was Kaszeta who authored the investigation into the use of sarin in Syria.
“Director of Strongpoint Security, a UK-based security and defence consultancy. Subject matter expert in chemical, biological, and radiological/nuclear (CBRN) defence, as well as traditional physical and operational security issues. US-UK dual national, of partial Lithuanian descent. Served as a Chemical Corps officer in the US Army, CBRN and Disaster Preparedness Advisor at the White House Military Office, and as a specialist in the US Secret Service before relocating to the UK in 2008. Published author in his field. Considerable experience and connections in Baltic States. Russian linguist (moderate spoken and written).”
Is this an independent whistleblower? And this friend of Christo Grozev is not connected with American intelligence and does not receive money from it? And what, are his “investigations”about chemical attacks in Syria or the “Skripal case” reliable? It is likely that those like Kaszeta, on request, simply legalise the position of Washington and London in the information field in order to strengthen western propaganda. And they make good money from it.
Thus, The Following Facts Are Obvious To Us:
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- Christo Grozev works in close connection with Roman Dobrokhotov and The Insider, they have common funding and perform dirty information work in accordance with the desire of their clients.
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The Main Character Enters The Stage
And what about Aleksey Navalny? He also participates in this, because Grozev is his great friend. In December, Navalny published a video in which he, sitting next to Grozev, pretended to be an assistant to Nikolay Patrushev and called allegedly an employee of the FSB Institute of Criminology Konstantin Kudryavtsev. But we have every reason to consider this video a theatrical production.
It is already known that the stated time of this call does not coincide with the real one. Recall, as was stated by Navalny himself, his “prank” occurred at 7 a.m. Moscow time (5 a.m. local time), but the footage with Christo Grozev’s emotional reaction to what Navalny’s interlocutor said shows a different time on the wall clock – 4.15 or 16.15. The frame also includes the window through which Grozev looks. Outside the window – twilight.
In the city of Ibach, where Navalny and Grozev were then located, sunset was at 16.35, and dawn and dusk were at 7.35. This suggests that the recording was conducted in the late afternoon, and not early in the morning, as Navalny said.
They are also trying to convince us that a certain Mr. Ustinov, unknown to anyone, who Navalny introduced himself to, will be able to talk to an FSB officer just like that, by calling on a regular phone. And this employee will tell everything to a person he hears for the first time? This is absurd. Finally, the direct (and naive) question of the interlocutor at the end of the conversation is also alarming – is there anything wrong with the fact that the conversation was held on a regular phone.
However, the analysis of the staged nature of the call hides the main thing from us. This is the first time we really see Grozev and Navalny together. We have received irrefutable visual evidence of their joint work. Here is how the head of the International Eurasian Movement, Aleksandr Dugin, reacted to this in an interview with us:
“When Navalny showed up with Grozev, no other evidence of his ties to the CIA and receiving money from Soros is no longer needed. Christo Grozev is worse than the CIA, worse than MI6. He represents the spearhead of the world government.”
What Does This Mean?
The scope of a single investigation does not allow us to consider all the episodes of Christo Grozev’s biography and reveal all his connections with western intelligence agencies. Rather, it is a job for the investigation. However, even from the analysis of open and accessible sources, it is clear in what a tight knot the entire “sect” of anti-Russian propagandists has intertwined.
It is Grozev, a man who has received USAID and Soros money since his student days, who is now reaching out to Navalny. There is no point in proving this, because they filmed themselves next to each other. Of course, Roman Dobrokhotov and The Insider not only published investigations into the “poisoning” of Navalny, but also continue to disperse their information attack. And we know their sources of funding very well. As well as the likely clients of these “investigations”.
However, most importantly, through The Insider, which worked together with the traitor of the Motherland Sergey Mikhailov, Dobrokhotov is connected with Bellingcat and Christo Grozev. And he, as we now clearly see, is with Navalny. It is here that the connection between the leader of the non-systemic protest in Russia and the FSB officers who stained their uniforms is revealed. They couldn’t help but support or even guide the likes of him. As is said, draw your own conclusions.
Egor Kucher
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