RUSSIA-BULGARIA Gebrev again in the crosshairs, tension between Sofia and Moscow

A large fire destroyed an arms depot belonging to the tycoon, who was the first victim of an attempted Novichok poisoning in 2015. Kremlin pressure on the country’s war industry that supplies Kiev.

Sofia () – Bulgaria was shaken a few days ago by an attack on businessman Emilian Gebrev, who had already been the victim of poisoning attempts by Russian services. The pressures and sabotage of the Kremlin in the sister country, today aligned against its war claims, have become even more topical with the new government in Sofia and on the eve of the visit of the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenski.

At 4am on June 25, a huge fire broke out on the outskirts of the Bulgarian town of Karnobat – known for the production of excellent wines – which destroyed Gebrev’s warehouse at the Emko arms factory. In 2015, the businessman was the first victim of Novichok, the new poison developed by the Russian GRU counterintelligence, three years before the murder of Skripal and his daughter in England, and the attempted poisoning of Navalni in the summer of 2020. In addition to avoiding new lethal doses, after Gebrev recovered he had to put out another fire exactly one year ago, on July 31, 2022, which also set off bombs being manufactured and the culprits could never be identified.

After the 2015 attack, the then Bulgarian Defense Minister Boyko Noev declared on television that “the Kremlin wants to destroy the entire war industry in Bulgaria”, one of the main arms-exporting countries. Moscow wanted to impose an agreement on Sofia according to which the Bulgarians could not export arms and ammunition without the permission of the Russians, while Gebrev’s company did a lot of business with Ukraine. The same businessman said that he was “100% sure” that the sabotage was the work of the Russian services, and today he goes even further, stating that he is “very clear about the scheme and the mechanisms, and also the group of people who they attack the arms depots”. Some members of the power structures that have governed Bulgaria in the last 10-12 years would be part of it. “There are 50 or 60 people who are at the service of interests that have nothing to do with the of our country,” he explained.

The Bulgarian prosecutor’s office basically agrees with this thesis, but “strangely it doesn’t take any initiative,” Gebrev observes. The current Prime Minister Nikolaj Denkov says he is convinced that “evil forces” are at work in these events, and has ordered increased surveillance of the arms factories, but at the same time he admits the limited possibilities of the executive branch in the face of “explosions and attacks that have been taking place regularly for 10 years.” The latest incident, according to hints from the prime minister, would be related to Sofia’s declaration of her intention to join the European initiative to supply 1 million artillery ammunition to Ukraine.

The leader of the pro-European “Let’s Keep the Changes” party, Kiril Petkov, who is part of the governing coalition, gave an interview to Politico to comment on the anniversary of the expulsion of 70 Russian diplomats from Sofia in June last year. It was a decision aimed precisely at countering sabotage, and Petkov praised the courage of Denkov, who had risked breaking off diplomatic relations with Moscow.

Petkov maintains that “Bulgaria must free itself from the influence of Moscow agents, as a priority in the fight against corruption”, spread and organized precisely by the secret services, which “after the fall of communism played a fundamental role in the formation of powerful mafia groups” also involved in drug and arms trafficking. Even Denkov confirmed these concerns in several of his speeches, promising that “we will not allow this state of affairs to continue”, starting with a reform of the services to eliminate all “Kremlin lackeys”.

Russian propaganda is widespread in Bulgaria and uses all kinds of means, including computerized ones, to discredit Sofia’s support for Ukraine, relying on the figure of the pro-Russian president, General Rumen Radev, elected in 2017, and many other politicians aligned with Moscow. As several commentators claim, Bulgarian Russophilia is still widespread as a kind of “Stockholm syndrome”, and the country that was once a “master of letters” for Russians, today struggles to escape its rule.