Bulgarian journalist Kristo Grozev, who coordinated the investigation that in 2020 uncovered a group of assassins put on the trail of Alexei Navalny by the FSB, says he can only rule out one possibility for his death: that it was a surprise to the Kremlin. , reports Meduza.

When asked by Meduza journalists what, in his opinion, might happen in Russia after Navalny’s death, Grozev replied that he had already received a warning from his sources that “a whole wave of repressions and murders might begin” and that Russian President Vladimir Putin has “special plans” for it. Russian opposition leaders.

“If this is true, [Ilia] Yasin and [Vladimir] Kara-Murza will be particularly vulnerable in prison,” he warned.

Yasin, sentenced last April by Russia to 8 and a half years in prison for condemning the war in Ukraine, said this Tuesday that he will continue his fight against the regime of Vladimir Putin.

“As long as my heart beats in my chest, I will fight against tyranny. As long as I live, I will fear no evil. And as long as I breathe, I will be with my people. I swear,” he wrote in a letter published Tuesday by his relatives.

Also in April 2023, Volodymyr Kara-Murza was sentenced to 25 years in prison, which was the harshest sentence ever handed down to a political opponent of Vladimir Putin. On January 29, Kara-Murza’s wife said that he disappeared in Russian penitentiaries, just like Navalny last December.

This is due to the fact that the Russian authorities do not notify relatives of detainees when they are transferred from one prison to another. His fate is even more worrying, as he was already being staged for a penal colony in Siberia last September.

Three years ago, investigative journalists of the Bellingcat site coordinated by Grozev showed that the same team of FSB assassins, the Federal Security Service of Russia, which allegedly poisoned Navalny in August 2020, made several more attempts to kill Kara-Murza as well.

Hristo Grozev claims that it is impossible for the Kremlin not to know that Navalny will die

Responding to a question about the death of Oleksii Navalny, Grozev stated that:

“So far, I completely rule out only one scenario: that Navalny’s death would be a surprise, especially unpleasant, for the Russian authorities. Well, I don’t think he was simply “mistreated” or brought to this state by “negligence”. Excluded. Because the FSB understood the value of Navalny for the future of Russia, no matter what it turns out to be.”

Grozev also noted that, despite the difficulties in conducting an investigation into a murder committed in such an isolated place as the town of Harp in northern Siberia, where the infamous penal colony where Navalny died is located, Bellingcat will try to find out what happened to this .

“The advantage is that in a small and remote place like Harp, any traces left by would-be assassins will be much more visible. And it is not only about documents or dates of flights, but also about witnesses. It is one thing to look for them in a big city, and quite another when an FSB car passes through a small village. It will be visible from every window,” he said.

In March 2022, a month after President Vladimir Putin launched a war in Ukraine, Bellingcat journalists published an investigation that also identified the killer of Boris Nemtsov, who was killed by the FSB in 2015 in Moscow.

Before the rise of Navalny, Nemtsov was the most famous opposition politician in Russia, who was considered a real threat to the power of Vladimir Putin.

According to Bellingcat investigations, both Nemtsov, Kara-Murza and Navalny were targeted in 2020 by the same secretive FSB assassin group, the successor to the Soviet-era KGB.

Bellingcat’s investigation into Navalny’s firing squad while he was at large can be found here:

• The Russian special service has been monitoring Navalny since 2017 / How a group of FSB killers who allegedly tried to poison the activist have been operating since July