Once Moscow’s most reliable satellite in Eastern Europe during Communist times, Bulgaria now adopts a tougher stance by closing out 2020 with another expulsion of a Russian diplomat charged with espionage. This challenged the relations between the countries, created speculations and theories and paved a way for further interpretations on how Bulgaria can get away from Kremlin’s shadow - or whether the often controversial EU member only wants to create a smoke screen for affairs on a different level.
A military attaché with a hidden agenda…
"In the period from 2017 to the present, another citizen of the Russian Federation has carried out intelligence activities, during which military information was collected, including the number of US troops stationed on the territory of Bulgaria," stated the Prosecution in Bulgaria on December 18. “The purpose was to pass this information to Russian military intelligence in Moscow. In order to carry out his illegal activity, the diplomat had contacts with a Bulgarian who had access to the relevant classified information, had promised to collaborate and had been granted financial benefit.”
While no name was announced in the official statements, according to Nova TV the diplomat in question is military attaché Colonel Vasiliy Sazanovich. After the announcement, the U.S. and British embassies in Sofia expressed support for Bulgaria for protecting its sovereignty and security. Meanwhile, The Russian Embassy described the claim as baseless and that this doesn’t improve the stability and the dialogue in the region in any way. Minister of Foreign Affairs and former Minister of Regional Development Ekaterina Zaharieva also took a stand: “It’s obvious that Russia collects information about the military and defense capabilities of the countries who are part of NATO. This is nor proper, nor pleasant”, she said in an interview for bTV from December 21.
In a tit for tat move, which Zaharieva said she was expecting, on December 28 Russia announced the expelling of the Bulgarian military attache’s aide Lieutenant-Colonel Mitko Borisov through a note sent to Bulgaria’s ambassador in Moscow Atanas Krastin.
…and a nest of Russian spies
This is the latest chapter in a story that’s surprisingly long and often vague for those who are not following the local affairs. The Russian diplomat is the sixth to be expelled by Bulgaria since October 2019 for suspected espionage. On September 23 Bulgaria also expelled two Russian diplomats under suspicions of spying and were given the usual 72 hours to leave the country. The Kremlin quickly accused Bulgaria of deliberately harming bilateral relations: “We see this as a deliberate attempt to harm constructive Russian-Bulgarian cooperation.”
At the time The Russian Embassy in Sofia said it had received only a verbal note, but was not provided with any proof that the two had acted in an inappropriate way. In January a Russian consular official and a trade representative were also declared “personae non gratae”, which was followed by a similar reaction from the Russian officials. On October 28 2019 a first secretary at Moscow’s embassy in Sofia was asked to leave the country on espionage grounds.
These cases were abandoned by the Bulgarian Prosecution after announcing them to the media as all of the members have diplomatic immunity.
On September 10 2019, former member of Bulgarian Socialist Party and chairman of “Russiophiles” movement Nikolay Malinov was charged with money-laundering and spying for Russian-based organisations. Through the decades the Bulgarian Socialist Party, a successor of the one-time Communist party, has been associated with pro-Russian and conservative sentiments. At the time the prosecution also announced that it’s investigating Malinov’s links with Russian media mogul Konstantin Malofeev, General Leonid Reshetnikov of Russian Institute for Strategic Studies and the ex-head of the now defunct Bulgarian Corporate Commercial Bank, Tsvetan Vassilev, currently exiled in Belgrade. Malofeev is banned from entering the EU and the US for his role in the destabilisation of Ukraine, while Reshetnikov got banned from entering Bulgaria for 10 years.
In a TV interview in 2019, Solomon Passy, Foreign Minister in the Government of Simeon Sakskoburggotski (2001-2005), claimed that there are “around 68” spies working for the Russian embassy in Sofia and over 100 beyond the base. According to his information, for which he didn’t give sources, the network became active after Bulgaria agreed and paid 1 billion euro to purchase eight F-16 Block 70 fighter jets from the U.S. This fits with the further expulsions which are claimed to be because of spying over the military's affairs.
The Russian Embassy has not yet responded to Veridica on whether more official information was presented to them after the media announcements of the expulsions and whether they expect further worsening of the relationship between the Bulgarian and the Russian institutions.
From Russia to the UK, via Sofia, and back: travelling on the trail of poisonings
Late 2020 brought new developments on the case of businessman and arms dealer Emilian Gebrev who was poisoned in 2015. The attempted murder also made headlines as the poisoning was investigated for possible links with the 2018 attack on former Russian military agency officer Sergei Skripal and that the Novichok nerve agent was potentially used on both accounts.
In February three Russian men (announced with their fake names Sergey Viacheslavovich Fedotov, Sergey Viktorovich Pavlov and Georgi Gorshkov) were charged in absentia with poisoning Gebrev and two people close to him (his son and a production chief) through “intoxication with an unidentified organophosphorus substance”.
However, Gebrev, who slipped into coma in April 2015 and is now recovered, announced that since 26 August 2020, Bulgaria’s prosecution has suspended the criminal proceedings against the three indicted suspects and is not investigating any Russian role in his poisoning. This itself puts the Bulgarian Prosecution in an ambivalent role of flexing muscles in cases where the consequences are little and retreating when the going gets tough. Both of the last Chief Prosecutors, Sotir Tsasarov and Ivan Geshev, are seen by activists, opposition media and protesters as a shield for the problematic status quo of the country, which went through a continuous anti-system protest wave in 2020.
On September 4 Bellingcat reported that the probes with the toxic substance have disappeared from from the ‘Verifin’ Laboratory in Helsinki and claimed that one of the spies present in Bulgaria during the time of Gebrev’s poisoning, Sergey Fedotov, is the cover identity of Denis Sergeev, a Major General who was also in the UK during the 2018 attempt on the lives of Sergey Skripal and his daughter.
Gebrev also made media appearances commenting on how his symptoms were similar to those described in regards to activist Alexei Navalny’s controversial poisoning in August. The reasons for Gebrev’s poisonings are sometimes seen in light of his business contracts in Ukraine, although he insists they’re not essential for his work.
The soft power game: friends in politics and gas on the pipeline
Russian influence is also seen as instrumental in the development of some of the far-right parties in Bulgaria, such as the out-of-government opposition party “Vazrajdane” whose followers often raise Russian flags and wear Putin T-shirts on protests and are also associated with nationalist and antivax rethoric.
Bulgaria remains at an ambivalent relationship with Russia regarding its gas dependency. Despite Prime Minister Boyko Borissov’s assurances that starting on January 1, 2021, Bulgaria’s resources will be diversified with Azeri gas and in this way will break the energy giant Gazprom’s monopoly in the region, things look different on a closer look. According to an analysis by Bulgarian weekly newspaper Capital, Gazprom will continue to be an instrument for influence on a geopolitical level because of the limited possibilities of Bulgaria to import gas from elsewhere, as it remains surrounded by countries and streams who have their gas transferred from Russia. “Borissov claimed Bulgaria has reached 100% gas independence from Russia but that’s a complete lie”, said on January 5 during a Facebook live appearance Hristo Ivanov, co-leader of opposition party “Da, Bulgaria” and former Minister of Justice. In a TV appearance, energy expert Hristo Kazandjiev, as of recently associated with newly formed party “Republicans for Bulgaria”, said he sees the “diversification” as a way for the government to make a way for Russian influence in Southeast Europe while Bulgaria falsely appears as independent from it.
Laying the blame on the Americans
In his media appearances through 2020, Russian ambassador to Bulgaria Anatoliy Makarov managed to find a common thread between the gas transit and the espionage cases, however, without providing specific revelations or clear information. In a TV appearance from February last year he hinted that the expulsions are a provocation, ignited by the US, as they started from 21 October 2019, when the plans for building a continuation of the Turkish Stream pipeline to Serbia from Bulgaria, through which Gazprom delivers, were officially confirmed.
Furtherly, in an interview for the often government friendly newspaper “24 Hours” from November 11, Makarov said that he doesn’t see the “diplomatic tensions” between the two counties as a long term factor in their relations. “I’m positive that these are episodic, unfriendly attacks, have an initiator and a beneficent who is not Bulgaria.” He also describes the expulsions as an artificially created “anti-Russia rhetoric”.
Bulgaria is not the only European country that had to deal with Russian spies. In 2020 news about exposed Russian espionage affairs dominated in Czech Republic, where two diplomats were expelled over a poisoning plot, and most recently in the The Netherlands, where also two officials were charged for targeting the high-tech sector and creating a "substantial network of sources" in the industry.
