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New York Times
6 days ago
- General
- New York Times
The Man Putin Couldn't Kill
Supported by Interpol had been looking for a disgraced finance executive for weeks when Christo Grozev, an investigative journalist, found him, hiding in Belarus. Grozev had become expert at following all but invisible digital trails — black-market cellphone data, passenger manifests, immigration records — in order to unmask Russian spies. These were the sleeper cells living in Western countries and passing as natives, or the people dispatched to hunt down dissidents around the world. He identified the secret police agents behind one of the most high-profile assassination plots of all: the 2020 poisoning of the Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny. That revelation put Grozev in President Vladimir Putin's cross hairs. He wanted Grozev killed, and to make it happen the Kremlin turned to none other than the fugitive financier, who, it turns out, had been recruited by Russian intelligence. Now the man that Grozev had been tracking began tracking him. The fugitive enlisted a team to begin the surveillance. The members of that team are behind bars now. The financier lives in Moscow, where several times a week he makes visits to the headquarters of the Russian secret police. Grozev — still very much alive — imagines the man trying to explain to his supervisors why he failed in his mission. This gives Grozev a small measure of satisfaction. On May 12, after a lengthy trial, Justice Nicholas Hilliard of the Central Criminal Court in London sentenced six people, all of them Bulgarian nationals, to prison terms between five and almost 11 years for their involvement in the plot to kill Grozev, among other operations. The group had spent more than two years working out of England, where the ringleader maintained rooms full of false identity documents and what the prosecution called law-enforcement-grade surveillance equipment. In addition to spying on Grozev and his writing partner, the Russian journalist Roman Dobrokhotov, the Bulgarians spied on a U.S. military base in Germany where Ukrainian soldiers were being trained; they trailed a former Russian law enforcement officer who had fled to Europe; and most embarrassingly for Moscow, they planned a false flag operation against Kazakhstan, a Russian ally. In the past two decades England has been the site of at least two high-profile deadly operations and more than a dozen other suspicious deaths that have been linked to Russia. Yet the trial of this six-person cell appears to be the first time in recent history that authorities have successfully investigated and prosecuted Russian agents operating on British soil. The trial and its outcome, then, are victories. They are small ones, however, relative to the scope of the threat. The Bulgarians seem to be only one part of a multiyear, multicountry operation to kill Grozev. That in turn is only a small part of what appears to be an ever-broadening campaign by the Kremlin, including kidnappings, poisonings, arson and terrorist attacks, to silence its opponents and sow fear abroad. The story of the resources that were marshaled to silence a single inconvenient voice is a terrifying reminder of what Putin, and beyond him the rising generation of autocratic rulers, are capable of. The story of how that single voice refused to be silenced — in fact redoubled his determination to tell the truth, regardless of the very real consequences — serves as a reminder that it's possible to continue to speak and act in the face of mortal danger. But the damage that was done to Grozev's own life and the lives of the people around him is a warning of how vulnerable we are in the face of unchecked, murderous power. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
21-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Aleksei Navalny Among National Book Critics Circle Award Winners
A posthumous memoir by the Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, which detailed his fight against autocracy and corruption in Russia and was published eight months after he died in prison, won a National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. Announcing the award, Rebecca Hussey, a member of the autobiography committee, praised the memoir, 'Patriot,' as a masterpiece and 'an eyewitness account of history, and a work of moral imperative and literary intelligence.' Hisham Matar's novel 'My Friends,' a story about a Libyan man living in exile in London, won the fiction prize. The awards, which were announced Thursday at a ceremony at the New School in New York City, are among the most highly regarded literary prizes in the United States. The winners are chosen by book critics instead of committees made up of authors or academics, which is how most literary prizes are administered. The organization, which dates to 1974, is made up of more than 800 critics and review editors. This year's awards recognized works published in 2024 and were open to authors of books published in English in the United States. Along with awards in categories like biography, criticism, autobiography, fiction and poetry, the group also recognizes individuals and organizations for their work in support of literary culture. This year, Lauren Michele Jackson, a contributing writer at The New Yorker and the author of 'White Negroes,' received the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. The award, named in honor of a former editor at The New York Times Book Review, goes to an N.B.C.C. member for literary criticism. The service award was given to Lori Lynn Turner, the associate director of the New School's creative writing program. Sandra Cisneros, the author of the groundbreaking novel 'The House on Mango Street,' whose work helped pave the way for Mexican American and other Latino writers, received the lifetime achievement award. Third World Press, one of the largest independent Black-owned presses in the U.S., which was founded in 1967 and has published major Black writers such as Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez and Gwendolyn Brooks, won the Toni Morrison Achievement Award. Below is a list of this year's award-winning titles. 'Patriot: A Memoir' by Aleksei Navalny, translated from Russian by Arch Tait with Stephen Dalziel, is a memoir Navalny started writing after surviving a near-fatal poisoning with the lethal nerve agent Novichok in Siberia in 2020, and continued writing while in prison, where he died at age 47. 'Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar' by Cynthia Carr, is a biography of the transgender actress and star of some of Andy Warhol's films. 'There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension,' is Hanif Abdurraqib's best seller about how sports can anchor us to a sense of place, told through the story of a 2002 basketball game in Columbus, Ohio, where he grew up. 'My Friends' by Hisham Matar, follows a young Libyan man who is granted asylum in London after he is targeted for attending an anti-Qaddafi protest, and has to rebuild a new life exile. 'Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space' by Adam Higginbotham, is a propulsive and devastating account of the 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, and the causes behind the disaster. 'Wrong Norma' by Anne Carson, is a collection of verse that often reads like essays or prose, and covers such wide ranging subjects as snow, Joseph Conrad, Flaubert, poverty, Roget's Thesaurus and Carson's father. 'A Last Supper of Queer Apostles' by Pedro Lemebel, translated from Spanish by Gwendolyn Harper, is a selection of essays about political and cultural icons including Che Guevara and Elizabeth Taylor, the messy aftermath of following the collapse of authoritarian rule under Augusto Pinochet and living through the AIDS epidemic in Chile. 'Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir' by Tessa Hulls, is a graphic memoir that tells the story of the author's family, folding in reflections on Chinese history, immigration, and trauma.
