which is dubbed in russia the bellingcat law. >> reporter: christo grozev is executive director of bellingcat0 full-time researchers. his personal focus has been on russian political assassinations. >> what have you learned about how vladimir putin operates? >> what we have found out is that none of these crimes could have been perpetrated without vladimir putin being in the know and not only aware but approving of all of these crimes. so in a nutshell, what we found out is that putin is operating an industrial-scale assassination program on his own people. >> reporter: bellingcat's next big project, the russian assassination program, started in 2018 after a russian defector and his daughter living in britain were poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent. the british had passport photos and false names of two suspects but nothing else. grozev knew that russia's government and commercial records are for sale on an online black market. so with the fake names he bought the suspects' passport records. >> the passport numbers on the two passports were identical except for the last digit. >> the

let's hear from christo grozev — he's chief russia investigator of bellingcat, an investigative journalism chatrooms, and we see that they don't trust their own government any more. the worst thing is that even if russia were correct in claiming that this was a sort of an accident, even that alone is a very damning statement because, to quote one of the pro—war opinion leaders in russia, i hope it's the ukrainians that destroyed these planes because the idea of us doing it ourselves is even worse. it shows total incompetence. so let's get into why crimea is so important. russia took control of — or annexed — crimea from ukraine in march 201a. ukraine and the majority of the international community continue to regard crimea as occupied ukrainian territory. ukraine has made no secret of wanting to take it back. just last month, russia sounded a warning. ex—president dmitry medvedev threatened that "judgment day will instantly await" if ukraine targeted crimea. this is the take of a former deputy defence minister for ukraine. we have a substantial progress on the continental part of ukraine a