Bulgaria will deport 70 Russian diplomats, the EU said, the largest number of Russians simultaneously ordered by the Balkan nation. The move, announced by the foreign ministry and the outgoing prime minister, was the largest expulsion of Russian diplomats from Sofia in recent years and more than half the size of Moscow’s diplomatic footprint in the Balkans. “Bulgaria is going to deport 70 Russian diplomats … Our services have recognized them as people who worked against our interests,” Prime Minister Kirill Petkov told reporters on Tuesday. “All those who work against the interests of Bulgaria will be invited to return to their country. “We expect a full 70-seat plane to fly back to Moscow,” Petkov said. Those identified as a “threat to national security” must leave by July 3rd, the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry said. There was no immediate Russian response to the allegations of espionage, although an anonymous source told Russia’s TASS news agency that Moscow would respond. the type of deportation of European diplomats. The Bulgarian Foreign Ministry said it had summoned Russian Ambassador Eleonora Mitrofanova to brief her on Sofia’s decision to deport her en masse. Bulgaria also expected Russia to temporarily close its consulate general in Ruse in northern Bulgaria, while Bulgaria would temporarily close its consulate in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, the ministry said. Petkov has taken an unusually strong stance against Russia for a country that enjoyed close ties with Moscow during the communist era and has long attracted Russian tourists. He fired his defense minister in February for refusing to call what Russia describes as a “special military operation” against Ukraine a “war.” Bulgaria had already deported 10 Russian diplomats in March for the war in Ukraine. Although a member of the EU and NATO, Bulgaria was once a staunch ally of the Soviet Union under communism and still has close cultural, historical and economic ties with Russia. A series of espionage scandals since 2019 has worsened relations between the two countries and resulted in the expulsion of about 20 diplomats and a technical assistant.
