Bulgaria’s PM, President comment on expelled Russian ‘spy’ diplomats
Commenting on September 24 on Bulgaria’s latest expulsion of Russian diplomats identified by the State Agency for National Security and prosecutors as spies, Prime Minister Boiko Borissov said that he had warned Russian President Vladimir Putin a few years “that I do not allow such things on the territory of Bulgaria”.
Borissov was speaking a day after the Foreign Ministry, responding to a report from the Prosecutor’s Office, ordered two Russian diplomats to leave the country after an investigation established that they were trying to obtain Bulgarian military and state secrets.
Russia has denied that the two are spies but has agreed to their expulsion. Moscow said that it would retaliate for the expulsions.
With the latest two, Bulgaria has expelled five Russian diplomats in just more than a year because of espionage.
Borissov told reporters that his country’s intelligence and security services were good.
The State Agency for National Security and Prosecutor’s Office had acted they way they did because they had sufficient information, he said.
Head of state President Roumen Radev said that protecting national security was an “absolute priority”.
“There can be no compromise here… I hope that both the services and the prosecution have gathered the necessary and objective evidence to minimise the diplomatic consequences, because there are always such,” Radev said.
Please support independent journalism by clicking on the orange button below. For as little as three euro a month or the equivalent in other currencies, you can support The Sofia Globe via patreon.com and get access to exclusive subscriber-only content:
