Hours after he was put under Russia’s “wanted” list, Bulgarian investigative journalist Christo Grozev said he has “no idea on what grounds” the decision was taken and that the Russian government “is scared of our work and would stop at nothing to make it go away”.

Without specifying a particular reason, the Russian interior ministry said that Grozev – who is the lead Russia investigator at the journalism outfit Bellingcat – is “wanted under an article of the Criminal Code”.

The journalist has been charged with disseminating “fake news” about the Russian army, according to independent human rights monitor OVD-Info.

Grozev has reported on Russia’s involvement in a number of high-profile incidents, including the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in eastern Ukraine and the 2018 poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in the UK. Moscow has repeatedly denied its role.

Since the beginning of the Ukraine war, Grozev has repeatedly used digital tools to document Russian war crimes and atrocities. He also probed the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny in 2020, along with the leader’s team and other journalists.

After Russia attacked Ukraine, the Kremlin enacted a law that criminalised the dissemination of what it defines as “deliberately false information” about the Russian forces. The maximum penalty under the law is 15 years in jail.