• Investigation Poland rejects appeal against pre-trial detention of Spanish journalist Pablo González accused of spying for Russia
  • A Polish court identifies with the alias Rubtsov Pablo González, the Spanish journalist accused of spying for Russia

The Spanish journalist of Russian origin Pablo González, who has been detained in Poland since February 2022 on suspicion of espionage, collected for years information on the environment of people of the Russian opposition abroad such as Zanna Nemtsova, dissident and daughter of the Russian opponent murdered in 2015 Boris Nemtsov. On Pablo Gonzalez's mobile phone, Polish authorities found reports about Nemtsova and her Boris Nemtsov foundation and even documentation that they believe was copied from his computer.

The Russian media Agentstvo (formed by independent journalists from Russia who have had to flee the country) has obtained this information through two sources, which it does not mention by name. According to a source at the Boris Nemtsov Foundation, González met Zhanna Nemtsova in 2016 in Brussels. They became friends and the Spaniard began to be invited to the events of the foundation at the same time that he continued with his journalistic work in Basque newspapers such as Naiz and Gara and media in the rest of the country such as Público or La Sexta.

On Pablo's computer and mobile phone – which was copied by the Ukrainian security services in 2022 during an interrogation and which has since been reviewed by Polish investigators – there are reports allegedly written by Pablo González. They are about people he met through the Nemtsov Foundation, including lawyer Ilya Novikov and prominent opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza, currently imprisoned in Russia. It is not clear to Agentstvo who these reports were aimed at, but they do not appear to be journalistic materials. Two sources have transferred to this Russian media that Pablo González was probably an infiltrated agent of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU, Russia's military espionage service) in the environment of Zhanna Nemtsova.

Pablo González, who in the past had been highly critical of the Ukrainian authorities after the Maidan uprisings and of the Russian opposition, also reached out to prominent Moscow dissident Ilya Yashin, currently imprisoned by the Putin regime. Both coincided in various forums, including in Spain. The European Council on Foreign Relations (EFCR) invited Yashin to a conference in Madrid in 2016 to explain to journalists, deputies and experts the authoritarian drift that existed in his country, a democratic degradation about which González was skeptical on several occasions. Even so, he attended that forum in Madrid and even collaborated voluntarily and informally as an interpreter in some presentations, since he is fully fluent in Russian. At the end of the day, despite the ideological distance that separated them, González and Yashin went together to a soccer game that was held that weekend and spent time alone.

Detailed reports

The seized documents reveal that his work was methodical. Each report generally consisted of three parts: a description of the contacts made, an estimate of the expenses incurred, and an outlook on plans for the future.

Investigators have also found letters from Boris Nemtsov in the files confiscated from the journalist, documents allegedly copied from Zanna Nemtsova's laptop. Because of this finding, González faces yet another accusation: illegal access to private information.

Nemtsova declined to respond to media questions, saying she has a confidentiality agreement with Polish authorities. But at the time he spoke openly that he knew González and that he had made a very good impression on him. Pablo González even invited people from the Nemtsov Foundation to visit him in the Basque Country.

Olga Shorina, co-founder of the Nemtsov Foundation, admitted in statements to the media that González maintained communication with the leaders of the foundation and participated in several events. But he says he did not have access to the documentation or confidential information of the entity.

In reports to his bosses or clients, González wrote about how he crossed some borders, and whether or not there was surveillance. In one of the reports, he describes the experience of interrogation when crossing the border into Ukraine. In another document he explains that he is afraid to use his bank accounts and comments that he would use cash and cards of relatives.

Hunted in Ukraine

Pablo González's personal files fell into the hands of the Ukrainian security services shortly before the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, when he was interrogated by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) while working near the front accredited as a journalist, working mainly for the Abertzale newspaper Gara. The SBU demanded that González leave Ukraine, but copied all the data from his phone first.

González was later arrested in the Polish town of Przemysl, near the Ukrainian border. It happened on February 28, 2022, causing widespread surprise. "He has been identified as an agent of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of Russia, he was focused on carrying out activities for Russia, using his journalistic status and, thanks to this, he could move freely around Europe and the world, including in areas affected by armed conflicts and zones of tension," Stanislav Zharin detailed on March 4, 2022, Intelligence Coordinator of the Polish Government. Since then Warsaw has barely given information about the case and has kept Pablo González in a regime of almost total isolation, as his colleagues and groups of journalists have denounced.

Pablo González has worked as a reporter in Ukraine since the annexation of Crimea in 2014. He has Russian and Spanish passports, as he was born in the Soviet Union. In his Russian passport he does not appear as Pablo González transliterated into Cyrillic, but appears as Pavel Rubtsov, which raised suspicions at first. It is actually the surname of his father, Alexei Rubtsov, who has been working at media outlets such as RBC since 1999. Maybe that's why in one of the reports this sentence appears: "It's good that there was no one from RBC who could recognize me at the Boris Nemtsov forum in Prague." In the messages sent to his bosses, González also asks for payment for expenses related to his infiltration of Nemtsova's organization.

Connoisseur of Ukrainian politics

Gonzalez has a deep knowledge of Ukrainian politics and is co-author of the book Ukraine. From the Maidan Revolution to the Donbas War, one of the first and most complete investigations that appeared in Spanish on those facts, a book coordinated by Rubén Ruiz Ramas and where González wrote several chapters for free.

During the last decade he specialized in unrecognized republics and conflicts in them. His subjects were Kosovo, Nagorno-Karabakh (where he covered frontline fighting), Transnistria, Crimea and the Donetsk People's Republic, where he treasured a wealth of sources among Moscow-controlled separatist authorities. In the summer of 2014 he was involved in a scandal when he denounced without evidence that both EL MUNDO and the newspaper El País received money from the Ukrainian Government, which at that time had the oligarch Petro Poroshenko in the Presidency, in exchange for positive coverage. The RT propaganda channel echoed González's accusations against EL MUNDO, accusations that he refused to document unless someone gave him money in return.

He also criticized Alexei Navalny and the MH17 investigation. During the last Ukrainian presidential elections of 2019, when the comedian Volodimir Zelensky won, González spread that the ballots contained serial numbers that made it impossible for the vote to be secret, an accusation that after election night he had to withdraw.

The seized reports mention several relevant people Gonzalez met through connections to the Nemtsov Foundation. González also reports on his participation in European conferences, where he was invited to moderate panels. "It seems that I managed to sow a seed of doubt among Euro-Atlanticists," he boasted of the results of the Forum in Rzeszow, Poland.

  • Ukraine
  • Russia
  • Poland
  • Petro Poroshenko
  • Alexei Navalny
  • Europe

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