This is the story of a comedian who played the president, and then became the real president of Ukraine. The Zelensky Story I, comments, BBC 2024
He played the kind of character Ukraine dreamed about. ibid.
Vladimir Putin watched the fall of the Berlin Wall with horror. ibid.
Viktor Yanukovych – he is the Ukrainian that Vladimir Putin wishes to have in power. ibid.
Yanokovych became president of Ukraine in 2010. ibid.
He made Ukraine a laughing stock. He looted the state, and made his dentist son a billionaire. And he jailed his main opponents. ibid.
February 2014: Crimea, southern Ukraine: There were not Ukrainian troops. ibid.
Zelensky was an actor but he was telling us something true about the society in which we live. ibid.
He became even more popular because of Servant of the People. ibid.
The truth is, Truth did ask him to find dirt on the Bidens. The Zelensky Story II: President in the Real World, comment
Putin never wanted to meet Zelensky again. ibid.
The title of Vladimir Putin’s essay: On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians … It’s a manifesto of war. ibid.
24th February 2022: Russian forces invade Ukraine. The Zelensky Story III: War Leader
There was a huge rocket attack across the entire country. ibid. comment
This morning we are defending Ukraine alone … We have to survive. ibid. Zelensky news conference
Putin is playing the dirty gamble, expecting the West to get exhausted with supporting Ukraine. ibid. comment
Ukrainians just don’t know how long the war is going to last. ibid.
January 19th 2023: I was told that if I went back to Austria, they would immediately kill me. We will go after them. Kill List: Hunted by Putin’s Spies IKill List: Hunted by Putin’s Spies I, Grozev to father, Channel 4 2025
Christo Grozev says he was always aware his unorthodox investigation techniques would someday put him at risk. ibid. TV news
Christo Grozev has been contacted by a Russian scientist seeking to defect to the West. ibid.
A non-official top-secret programme on the development of new poisoning substances that went against the Chemical Weapons Convention. There we created all variations of Novochok. There are different forms of the poison. ibid. Grozev’s defector
Now I must get my family out of Russia because they may well capture them to get to me. ibid.
But somewhere near the top of the list is probably an oddly named investigative consortium known as Bellingcat. ibid. comment
The state [Russia] is gathering a huge amount of information about its citizens. ibid. Eliot Higgins, Bellingcat
Christo Grozev has been named in Russian media as a wanted criminal. ibid.
Reporter: So how many Russian agents have you uncovered?
Grozev: Names of people of relevance who I’ve focused on individually, about 300 … That I know are spies, we’re talking about 5,000. It’s one big puzzle. ibid.
Because of our investigations, the West holds someone in prison who has enormous value to Putin, a man called Vadim Krasikov. Krasikov: he’s a professional killer. ibid. Grozev
He [Krasikov] was finally caught in Berlin after shooting a man in broad daylight in a park. He refused to speak to police. ibid.
Putin has never been so vocal about defending a killer. ibid.
So for Krasikov alone, we could ask not for one but for many people. At the top of the list would be Alexei Navalny and Vladimir Kara-Murza. ibid.
Following the Navalny investigation, we had an abundance of residual data because the team of poisoners had travelled many, many, many hundreds of times. ibid.
There is a team of assassins whose only job is to physically eliminate the opponents of the Russian government. ibid. Mrs Kara-Murza
It’s like a fatwa of some sort. Grozev, TV interview
My dad has not answered his phone for two days. Grozev
They made the apartment a crime scene. ibid.
[Reporter to Christo Grozev]: Did you ever think you’d be investigating an assassination plot against yourself? Kill List: Hunted by Putin’s Spies II
Five British residents have been arrested suspected of surveilling Christo and his colleague, Roman Dobrokhotov. They await trial in London. ibid. TV news
Who paid these Bulgarians to spy on me? ibid. Grozev
While negotiations for a prisoner swap continue and his health deteriorates, Vladimir Kara-Murza is facing final sentencing. ibid. caption
12th August 2024: There is a prisoner swap underway right now between Russia, the United States and other countries. ibid. US TV news
In the end 16 people were released by the Kremlin. ibid. Grozev
The proximate cause of the war in Ukraine … It is now all but universally acknowledged that the war in Ukraine is a proxy war. George Galloway: lecture Provoked or Unprovoked? Youtube 2025
That makes quite a long list of wars lost by the Americans in the last few years. ibid.
The US/EU violent, illegal and undemocratic overthrow of the elected government of Ukraine is the proximate reason for the conflict. ibid.
30% of the entire population of the eastern part of Ukraine were Russian-speaking people; they were ethnically Russian. ibid.
The overthrow of the government, the deligitimisation of Russian language and culture, necessarily made the 30%, the one-third of [eastern] population anxious, nervous, fearful.
A chauvanistic form of Ukrainian nationalism which every day alienated more profoundly more and more people in the eastern part of Ukraine. And so the scene was set for the oppression which killed thousands. ibid.
Putin asked if he could join Nato. Putin asked if he could join the EU. When all they wanted was to be accepted for what the are – the biggest country in Europe. ibid.