Emilian Gebrev, a Bulgarian arms magnate who narrowly escaped two Russian assassination attempts, is sounding the alarm about a deliberate effort to disrupt crucial arms shipments to Ukraine.
Source: Gebrev made these comments to the Financial Times.
Details: Gebrev revealed that Russian saboteurs are actively targeting the factories and warehouses of his company EMKO, which manufactures most of the Bulgarian bullets and Soviet-style tank shells supplied to Kyiv.
Quote: “The Russian threats [mean] a new set of measures should be undertaken at a national level, as well as the level of the alliance,” Gebrev stated.
Gebrev connected the lack of progress in arresting or prosecuting any Russian operatives involved in his poisonings and the explosions at his company’s sites to Russia’s continued influence over Bulgaria’s government.
“There has been no result whatsoever in any of more than a dozen cases, involving Russian terrorist acts and spy networking in Bulgaria. All the investigations have been either stopped or stalled and none has been brought to court,” he noted.
The arms manufacturer and other insiders in Bulgaria’s defense industry argue that Russian agents are highly active in Bulgaria, particularly within the prosecutor’s office and the country’s security service.
“Russians are very interested in our facilities and the people manning them,” a Bulgarian official, who requested to remain anonymous, told The Financial Times.
However, Veselin Ivanov, a spokesman for the Bulgarian Prosecutor’s Office, insisted that the accusations of Russian infiltration are “categorically not true,” and that the new leadership is committed to changing the organization.
According to Ivanov, the prosecutor’s office documented the criminal activities of GRU agents and brought charges against them, but since Russia does not extradite its citizens, Sofia did not have the opportunity to prosecute them.
Background:
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In July, a large-scale fire broke out in a warehouse of the EMKO arms company near the Bulgarian town of Karnobat. The owner suspected that this was a deliberate arson.
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This fire followed another incident in which ammunition exploded due to a fire in another warehouse on July 31, 2022. An investigation into the incident is ongoing, but the prosecutor’s office has not provided official updates on the case.
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Prior to these events, Gebrev, who survived an alleged Novichok poisoning in 2015, stated that he was “100% sure” that Russian operatives were responsible for the explosion and subsequent fire in July 2022.
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Gebrev fell into a coma in 2015, and Western authorities and intelligence agencies believe he was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok by officers from Russia’s GRU military intelligence service.
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