There is a risk of new Russian sabotage actions against the military industry of Bulgaria, Christo Grozev, leading journalist with the open-source investigative journalism group Bellingcat told members of the Bulgarian parliament.
The journalist participated in the discussion “The influence of misinformation in the conditions of geopolitical crises”, organised by the pro-European coalition “Democratic Bulgaria” via video conference.
On 26 December, Russia’s Interior Ministry placed Grozev on its wanted list. It was not specified which criminal offence Grozev was suspected of, and no further information has been made public.
Grozev has long been a thorn in the Kremlin’s side, having played key roles in a number of Bellingcat’s most explosive investigations, including the 2018 poisoning of Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the British city of Salisbury and the 2020 poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny on a domestic flight in Siberia.
During the conference on Tuesday, Grozev said that in April 2016, there was an attempt prepared by the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) to significantly destabilise Bulgaria with two paramilitary groups following the model that was already implemented in Montenegro.
According to the preliminary organisation, about 700 people from the two paramilitary organisations planned to try to seize power, Grozev said. According to him, if the operation had been successful, it would have led to the significant destabilisation of Bulgaria.
This operation was carried out with the support of the Russian Orthodox Church and failed due to the preventive arrest and detention of hundreds of the participants by the paramilitary alliances, of which only 30 managed to reach Sofia, Grozev said. He explained that similar attempts were made in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.
Grozev did not give more details about the case, but according to EURACTIV Bulgaria’s sources, it is about the so-called planned Operation Liberation, which failed on 20 April 2016. Then thirty representatives of radical nationalist organisations, presenting themselves as the “transitional all-Bulgarian people’s government”, came out to protest in front of the National Assembly. The organisers were the Bulgarian Military Union “Vasil Levski” and BNO “Shipka”, united in the Committee for National Salvation “Vasil Levski”.
Six years later – at the end of 2022 – the State Agency for National Security announced that it was investigating pro-Russian radicals for a crime against the republic. These two pro-Russian organisations have maintained close contact with the pro-Putin rockers “Night Wolves”, who also have a branch of their organisation registered in Bulgaria.
“Although a large part of the major media today covers Russian aggression relatively objectively, this cannot be said for the past period, especially for 2014-2015. In that period, several print publications and television channels controlled by oligarchs in economic ties with Russia, projected the Russian narrative regarding what is happening in Crimea and Donbas, that there are cruel actions by the Kyiv regime,” Grozev said during the conference.
He explained that because of this, at the very beginning of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, a large part of the Bulgarian population had already formed either a purely pro-Russian point of view or one of emotional detachment, in which one adheres to the maxim that there are no innocents in this war. According to Grozev, the media are to blame for the accumulated disinformation capital in Bulgaria.
The journalist reiterated that Russian aggressive actions have been taking place since 2011 on Bulgarian territory when a series of explosions began in warehouses of the military industry. The Bulgarian Prosecutor’s Office announced that it is working on these cases, but there has been no information about what came of the investigation.
“There is largely no publicity about these cases. The vast majority of the population has no idea that Russia has been carrying out military, subversive actions on Bulgarian territory for more than ten years. If this information had become a real part of the information agenda, a large part of society could have formed their point of view on Russia’s role long ago and would be much more critical of the Kremlin’s messages today,” Grozev explained.
(Krassen Nikolov | EURACTIV.bg)
Source: euractiv.com
