Christo Grozev
a lead
Russia investigator for Bellingcat
who identified the Russians
involved in poisoning Putin opposition
leader Alexei Navalny.
Christo was just placed on
Russia's wanted list.
So, Krista, let me just start th
This just happening here
over these these past days.
Why do you think
Russia and Putin
now have just put you on the wan
Well, new year, new priorities,
I don't know.
The answer is there's no explana
Our lawyers
my lawyers have not been able
to get any answer as to
why would the charges
what it says on the most wanted
announcement
is he's been put on this list
for a violation of a Russian law
And it's completely anonymous.
There's no way for me to defend
from an anonymous charge.
The lowest can find out.
The Bulgarian government
and Bulgarian citizens
have been asking Russia to expla
And they're not giving the answe
I think it's a fatwa of some sor
I mean, it's like a message that
to other journalists as well
that don't comment on meddling t
do investigations with Russia.
And yet you continue to bravely
You continue your investigations
and you,
more than anyone know
at what possible cost.
Yeah, we investigated
you know, a series of assassinat
done by the Russian state.
And we
one of them
is an attempted
assassination in the valley.
But many other opposition figure
were targeted
by the same security services in
some of them with a fatal outcom
So Navalny
right now, I will ask you about
He he is.
You've got new details
surrounding his poisoning.
What are they?
Well, I mean, it's more details
as to the picture that we togeth
with CNN kind of painted
two years ago, almost
We found out a little more detai
that showed the effort
that the Russian government
went into to destroy the evidenc
of what they had just done there
More people
that were sent to clean up
after after the poisoning.
And also,
what we find out is more evidenc
that they were trying to
do something
to the other people around the l
in the valley, for example,
Maria Patrick,
who was the lead investigator. Y
I mean, we see members of the security s
going to her hotel
a couple of days before the pois
And we're still trying to find o
But there's more more granular d
as to exactly how they ran the o
Will publish an update soon.
All right.
So let me ask you about Putin
and the news that we have today
that we're talking about this
new commander for Ukraine.
General Gerasimov,
of course, a name
that many have become familiar w
But he is a person that the VoG
group chief,
Evgeny Prigozhin,
has disparaged publicly.
Right. A real split there, Prigozhin
with huge ambition.
And now suddenly the person who
sort of been
his is as his nemesis on
this is getting this big promoti
What does this mean?
Well, it means a couple of thing
One thing it means is that
by promoting
the chief of staff of the Army
to the position of a field
commander essentially
running the show,
you can't anymore call this a no
You can't call it the special op
It's a real war.
And sort of it's come out finall
Second thing is that
Putin has been between to power
sit in the middle of a power str
And Prigozhin actually showed hi
in show that he wants a piece
of a piece of the action,
wants to be in power.
But Putin
ultimately has to take
the side of the entity.
Prigozhin establishment,
which is the military establishm
to show your team the grasp of t
And what you see now is both sid
upset with with with with this o
And Prigozhin is going to do som
I think more to claim power,
more dramatic, more time to clai
So we should be watching that
in the next couple of days.
I think there will
be more lashing out by him.
All right. Well, we'll watch these next hou
And another story
that we've been following
closely here
is the plight of the former
president of Georgia,
Mikhail Saakashvili.
Now, in prison in Georgia,
which, of course, is a country
where Putin had had invaded,
obviously,
and is now run by a pro-Putin go
We have some images of him now i
extremely frail.
It's quite disturbing to see him
And I spoke with his son
and his lawyer recently.
They said
that they had DNA of his brought
medical facility
tested and his hair and nails sa
And here's what they said about
Those tests,
along with some of the blood
testing results that we
that we received, revealed heavy
arsenic, mercury, among others.
So that is what told us that
he was being poisoned
I understand he's reached out to
as best he could from prison.
What did he say to you?
Well,
he reached out
publicly on the Facebook message
and he asked for help
in investigating his own poisoni
because he doesn't
trust his own government,
his own authorities to do that p
It's a very unusual appeal.
Obviously,
and we'll do our best to to addr
And so far,
we are appealing to the
Georgian government
to actually reach out to us
and do this in a collaborative f
But if they don't do that,
we'll do it on our own.
We've proven that we can do it
without collaboration.
We certainly have.
But there's what you hear here
is consistent with other things
that you've seen. It is.
I mean, there's motive
and there's symptoms
that are consistence.
We have to find if there is mean
if there is a possibility
by travel of
the right type of people, right
profile of specialists,
That's something that may take
a few weeks or a few months to d
But we're going to look at this.
It's not certain
that it's the Russian
that did this,
but there's enough evidence for
to be looked at very, very caref
All right, Christo, thank you ve