October 29 (BTA) - A Russian diplomat posted in Sofia,

who has been implicated in espionage, has been declared a

persona non grata, the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry implied in a

press release on Tuesday.



"After the Russian Embassy notified us on Monday evening that

the diplomat in question had not left the territory of Bulgaria,

the Russian Ambassador was invited to an appointment at the

Ministry of Foreign Affairs at 10 a.m. He was served with a note

giving the Russian diplomat 24 hours to leave Bulgaria," the

press release points out.



On October 25, Bulgarian Foreign Ministry officials met with the

Russian Ambassador in Sofia Anatoly Makarov to discuss the case

among other topics of mutual interest. The Bulgarian side made

a verbal request that the Russian institutions recall their

official within 72 hours.



The diplomat, who is a first secretary at the Russian Embassy in

Sofia, enjoys diplomatic immunity under the Vienna Convention

on Diplomatic Relations and may not be criminally prosecuted.



The Bulgarian prosecution service said on Monday that, according

to an alert from the State Agency for National Security

confirmed by the Specialized Prosecution Office, since September

2018 the Russian had been holding regular clandestine

rendezvous with Bulgarian citizens, including a high-ranking

official with access to classified information of Bulgaria, the

EU and NATO. The purpose of the contacts had been to obtain

intelligence information constituting state secret in exchange

of material gains for the informants.



The prosecution service did not name the Bulgarian officials who

had been contacted by the Russian diplomat.



According to information of www.mediapool.bg, the First

Secretary concerned is Andrey Egorov.



Reacting to the development, Russian State Duma Committee on

International Affairs Deputy Chairman Dmitry Novikov said on

State-financed Radio Sputnik that "Bulgaria is subservient to

all tendencies, dogmas and myths that are taking shape in Europe

in respect of the Russian Federation. In this respect, the

Bulgarian authorities are therefore ready to show some

'all-European solidarity', which finds expression in support for

all types of economic sanctions as well as measures of

political and economic impact."



In September 2019, Atlantic Club of Bulgaria President and

former foreign minister Solomon Passy said in a bTV interview

that there were some 68 Russian spies in Bulgaria at the Russian

Embassy alone and several hundred others, whose names are

known. Passy spoke amidst a spy scandal in which Bulgaria's

Russophiles National Movement Chairman Nikolai Malinov was

charged with espionage in a suspected plot to further Russia's

interests in Bulgaria and retired Russian external intelligence

general Leonid Reshetnikov and Russian businessman Konstantin

Malofeev were barred from entering Bulgaria for ten years.



Bulgaria is expelling a Russian diplomat in connection with

espionage for the first time in 18 years. Back in 2001, three

Russian diplomats, including Military Attache Viktor Lomakhin,

were asked to leave the country after a former Bulgarian

military intelligence official was arrested while preparing to

deliver to the Russian Embassy top secret information on the

situation in the Balkans. LG



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Source: Sofia