In recent days, a spy scandal in favor of Russia has been gaining momentum in Austria , in which the name of the Bulgarian investigative journalist Hristo Grozev was involved. His laptop was stolen by agents of Russian services.
The investigative journalist stated in a special interview for BN that the special services from the USA and Europe warned him that his possible return to Bulgaria is assessed as a "highest category" risk. Therefore, our country remains a "limited territory" for him.
A former Austrian counterintelligence officer was arrested at the end of March. He has passed Austrian classified data to Russian intelligence, including from the mobile phones of high-ranking politicians. In a special interview with Nikolay Krastev, Hristo Grozev reported details about the route by which his stolen laptop was taken from Vienna and how it got to Moscow.
He commented that Bulgaria is a "convenient bridgehead" for the Russian security services in the Balkans, not only because they can pay proxies, but also because of the possibility of finding "ideologically sympathetic representatives of the authorities".
"A -- hopefully former -- prosecutor overseeing cases related to Unit 29155 is involved in social media groups thanking Putin for "clearing the Nazis" in Ukraine and congratulations are being written for Stalin's birthday. How conveniently and with what gloating Russia uses Bulgaria - sometimes it doesn't even need to pay to use "useful idiots", he commented on national television.
Grozev recalled that detachment 29155 is the group in the Russian military intelligence - GRU, which was used for a series of attacks throughout Europe, including in Bulgaria with the explosions in military warehouses and the poisoning of arms manufacturer Emilian Gebrev.
The second problem for Bulgaria's security, according to Grozev, is the concentration of Russian private properties along the Black Sea, where it can be seen how the state has allowed Russian spies to acquire property.
On the case of the illegal entry into his home in Vienna, Grozev commented that the Russian services took the wrong laptop, not the one on which the attempt to poison Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in the summer of 2020 was revealed. Grozev revealed how this happened and how Jan Marsalek organized the break-in at his home and then how his stolen laptop was transported through Sofia and Istanbul to Moscow where it was handed over to the FSB.
"One of these people is Bulat Yanborisov, the organizer of the "Silk Road" rally, which was used as a cover for the deployment of illegal agents in countries in Central Asia. Recently "Insider" and "Spiegel" revealed that this man was the go-between for all key Unit 29155 officials and in the attacks on American diplomats in China that led to the so-called Havana syndrome."