Sofia: Bulgaria’s foreign ministry said on Friday it would expel another Russian diplomat on suspicion of espionage, two weeks after the Balkan country declared ten Russian diplomats to be ‘personalities non greta’.
“The Ministry of External Affairs handed over a note to the diplomatic officer declaring him to be a ‘personless person’, giving him a 72-hour time limit to leave the country,” the ministry said in a statement.
Prosecutors said in a statement on Friday that the move was taken after a warning by Bulgarian prosecutors that the diplomat – the first secretary at Russia’s embassy in Sofia – was “involved in irregular intelligence activity” by collecting “information of national importance”. Was.
Special prosecutors announced that two mid-level officials and a third ministerial official at Bulgaria’s counter-intelligence State Agency for National Security (SANS) were being investigated for suspected espionage for Russia, without providing further details.
SANS chief Plamen Tonchev later said at a news conference that two longtime officials – a sector chief and a department head – had been suspended from work following an internal investigation into the agency, one of which was “in the interests of Russia”. in” was. I was working.”
Tonachev indicated that the revelations led to “more (Russian diplomats) declared ‘persona non greta’ in Bulgaria … after this case.”
Bulgaria had already expelled ten Russian diplomats on 18 March, amid a series of expulsions of Russian diplomats from European countries following the February 24 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Members of the European Union and NATO – once staunch allies of the Soviet Union under communism – still have very close cultural, historical and economic ties with Russia.
But a series of espionage scandals since 2019 have soured relations between the two countries and expelled some 20 diplomats and a technical assistant.
Sofia also recalled her ambassador to Russia last week for consultations amid angry exchanges between her prime minister Kirill Petkov and Sofia Eleonora Mitrofanova’s Russian envoy in recent weeks.
Petkov said he expected Russia to recall Mitrofanova, but as of Friday there was no indication that Moscow would do so.
Turkey’s retaliatory espionage against foreign spy networks has led to several arrests