Featured Image Credit: Channel 4
Topics: Vladimir Putin, Channel 4, TV, TV and Film, Documentaries, Russia
Michael Slavin
Topics: Vladimir Putin, Channel 4, TV, TV and Film, Documentaries, Russia
One journalist has revealed their four-word response to finding out they had been put on Vladimir Putin’s ‘kill list’.
Putin may predominantly be in the news for issuing chilling warnings about Ukraine, but the President of Russia was also in part the focus of a documentary that aired on Channel 4 last night.
The Russian dictator was once angered by a world-renowned journalist that is known by many as the ‘modern day Sherlock Holmes’.
The journalist, Christo Grozev, headed up Bellingcat, a Netherlands based investigative journalism group who had exposed Putin on several occasions.
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This was in large part where Grozev exposed his network of spies and killers, most notably identifying the attempted killers of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury and revealing the assassin to poison Alexei Navalny.
This led Grozen to be put on Putin’s ‘kill list’ and became the focus of Kill List: Hunted by Putin’s Spies.
Over the years, the journalist is believed to have exposed over 5,000 Russian spies, as well as around 300 agents.
When it was revealed to the journalist that the President of Russia wanted him dead, he simply told the documentarian filming him for Kill List ‘I can’t go home’.
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This was due to a message he received informing him that there was a ‘red team’ potentially waiting for him at his home.
Jamie Jones, the journalist who filmed the documentary, said that whilst he found the security measures throughout filming ‘silly’, he eventually realised how serious it was when part of a Bulgarian spy ring was arrested.
In perhaps the most bizarre detail of the story, the spies tracking Jones and Grozen were leaving Google reviews of their stay in hotels, in one even complaining about the lack of towels.
Discussing the whole affair, Grozen says in the documentary: “At different times of the day and year I feel different.
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“Sometimes I take pride in being able to create such a problem for such a formidable enemy of the free world, and it is kind of obvious that it has given inspiration to other journalists to do the same.
"I feel proud at times. And at times I feel very guilty because of the burden I have imposed on my family, and having to live without them and separate from them.
“Unbeknown to me having brought the Russian danger very close to the family and only finding out about it later. It is a mixed blessing.”
The documentary has received positive reviews since its release last night, with The Telegraph giving it a four star review, comparing it to being ‘like something from the realms of a crazy novel’.
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Kill List: Hunted by Putin’s Spies is available to watch on Channel 4 now.