A 'Frontline' Documentary Shows "What You Risk in Standing Up to Putin"

Antidote premieres via Frontline on WTTW Tuesday, May 6 at 9:00 pm and is available to stream.

The journalist Christo Grozev has helped identify the suspects behind the attempted assassinations of several enemies of Vladimir Putin, so he understands better than most what appearing on a wanted list can mean. Grozev, the subject of the new Frontline documentary Antidote, is on a Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs wanted list – and was subsequently warned by Western intelligence agents that there was an imminent threat to his life if he returned to Europe, where he and his family live, from New York City. He could not attend the funeral of his father, the cause of death ruled inconclusive. It is still unclear if his father was targeted or died naturally.

A couple years later, Grozev is still living in the U.S., separated from his family on the other side of the Atlantic. At least he’s living here “for now,” Antidote filmmaker James Jones said on a recent trip to Chicago for a screening of Antidote at the Doc10 Film Festival. 

“We live in unprecedented times,” Jones explained. “The assumption was always that assassinating someone in America was a red line that Russia wouldn’t cross. Who knows, given the relationship between Trump and Putin – [Trump’s] seeming inability to ever criticize [Putin], let alone sanction him – I don’t know if that still holds. And also what’s to say that [Trump] doesn’t turn around and do a deal with Putin and say, ‘Oh yeah, Christo is a Bulgarian spy. You can have him.’” 

A deal exchanging people between Russia and the West is a major plot point in Antidote, as Grozev works with others to secure the release of the Putin rival Alexei Navalny from Russian custody. Grozev and the journalism outlet Bellingcat investigated the poisoning of Navalny and revealed the identities of his alleged poisoners, a story featured in the Academy Award-winning documentary Navalny. Navalny had flown back to Russia and been imprisoned after recovering from the poisoning. Grozev wanted to secure the release of Navalny; other dissidents also eventually became part of the discussions.

Among them was the opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was arrested and imprisoned after Navalny. Grozev and Bellingcat’s reporting alleged that the same group behind the attack on Navalny had been following Kara-Murza around the time of two poisonings that he suffered earlier.

Kara-Murza’s wife Yevgenia is a recurring presence in Antidote as she advocates for her husband’s release, hoping that keeping his name in the press would prevent Putin from killing him. For Navalny, that precept did not hold true. Even as Grozev and others helped push the West to make a deal trading an alleged killer – whom Grozev’s own reporting had implicated – for the dissident, Navalny died in prison. But Kara-Murza was included in a later prisoner swap.

“Putin is a ruthless killer. He’s not this strategic genius manipulating the world,” said Jones. An important part of the film, he said, is “just to lay that out there at a time when it feels like the narrative in a lot of America is that [Ukrainian president Volodymyr] Zelensky is the bad guy.”

Another throughline of the documentary is the “war on truth, the war on journalism,” Jones added. Grozev’s journalism has had real-world effects, leading to the trials and imprisonment of alleged assassins. “I’m much more pessimistic about the power of [journalism]; I think Christo is more evangelical and idealistic about it,” said Jones, who has also made films for Frontline about North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and the former Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs that is suspected to have killed thousands of people. Duterte was recently arrested under an International Criminal Court warrant charging him with crimes against humanity. 

“Seeing Duterte in court is extraordinary. It’s not something I thought I’d see in my lifetime,” Jones said. “That does give some hope that everyone diligently investigating, documenting…it just builds momentum and pressure potentially on the court.” 

Grozev’s journalism and behind-the-scenes maneuvering – as in the prisoner swap or the facilitation of the defection of a Russian scientist, witnessed in Antidote – is an example of that kind of momentum and pressure. But the threats he now faces are perhaps even stronger indications of the power that such work can have, given that the Russian government apparently wants to silence him. 

Grozev’s situation, as depicted in Antidote, shows “What you risk in standing up to Putin, exposing the truth about Russia,” Jones said.