“We have already found the route of the truck in which the explosion occurred. This was: Bulgaria, Georgia, Armenia, North Ossetia and the Krasnodarsk region.” With this statement in conversation with President Vladimir Putin, Aleksandr Bastrykin, Chairman of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, caused a small earthquake in Bulgaria.
Because Bulgaria is the only NATO and EU member on this list and also the alleged starting point of the transporter used as a moving bomb that exploded on October 8, 2022 on the bridge from the Russian mainland to the port city of Kerch on the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea occupied by Moscow’s troops was.
Since then, the debates have escalated. It is said that there is a completely new “Bulgarian track”. Worried eyes turn from Sofia to Moscow: does the Kremlin want to accuse Bulgaria of a hostile act?
Could the country be drawn straight into the war? And is there a link between the new allegations and the two explosions at Bulgarian arms factories in August and September 2022? The only thing that is certain so far is that there are hardly any reliable facts and a lot of propaganda howling.
First of all, in typical Kremlin fashion, neither investigative committee chairman Bastrykin nor President Putin gave any evidence or proof of the Bulgarian origin of the bomb truck. The same applies to the alleged “Russian and foreign” masterminds of the attack.
Peter Stano, spokesman for EU Foreign Affairs Commissioner Josip Borell, therefore made it clear on October 10, 2022 that the EU had no confidence in the Russian information about the explosion on the bridge. It is by no means certain that the truck actually started in Bulgaria.
On October 11, 2022, interim Prime Minister Galap Donev also rejected Bulgarian involvement in the explosion two days late. At the same time, he promised a detailed investigation into the alleged truck, but also pointed out that “the information we have is not credible”. “So far, Bulgaria has only been mentioned as a geographical point on the truck’s route. Nothing else.”
The transitional government in Sofia had previously commissioned the Bulgarian domestic secret service to check the Russian version of the truck route. For this, however, the State Agency for National Security (DANS) is dependent on information from Moscow.
It is difficult to estimate whether she will get these and how reliable they are: “All the information from Russia can hardly be checked, neither for the route, nor for the truck or the explosives. This can only be done by examining the remains on site,” Tihomir Bezlov, security expert at the Think Tanks Center for the Study of Democracy in Sofia, told DW.
If the Moscow information about the truck’s route is correct, two questions arise: Why should the truck leave Bulgaria of all places? And does Moscow want to suggest that the explosives also come from Bulgaria and were already on their way there? “That makes perfect sense”, explains Tihomir Bezlov, “Bulgaria has one of the most transport companies, trucks and drivers in all of Europe. If Ukrainian secret services want to find a discarded car here, it would be easy to find a bankrupt trucker.”
The truck could have been brought from Bulgaria with the weekly ferry from the Black Sea port of Burgas to Batumi in Georgia. And the explosives? “It would be far too great a risk to load it at the beginning of the journey. It is much more likely that he was first loaded in Georgia or even in Russia itself,” explains security expert Bezlov. He also doesn’t want to believe that the explosives are of Bulgarian origin: “It is almost impossible that someone in Bulgaria could buy, smuggle and export several hundred kilos of explosive material without the Bulgarian, Western and probably also the Russian security services overheard.”
For Bezlov, other questions are much more important than the question of the origin of the truck and explosives: “Does the Kremlin propaganda want to blame Bulgaria? And if so, how will the transitional government and President Rumen Radev react to it?” In fact, just a few hours after the conversation between Bastrykin and Putin, posts loyal to the Kremlin appeared in Telegram channels that directly accused Sofia: “It was done in Bulgaria,” writes the war correspondent, for example of Komsomolskaya Pravda, Aleksandr Kots. “This means that in addition to Ukraine, foreign intelligence services could also have participated in the organization of this act of terrorism.”
Reports of such assessments from Moscow in the Bulgarian press led to the first political reactions. As has been the case throughout 2022, the Bulgarian stance on the Russian war against Ukraine is characterized by a complicated mix of foreign and domestic politics. Because in Bulgaria there has been a permanent internal political crisis for two years: there was only an elected government for the period between December 2021 and June 2022, albeit unstable. The transitional governments installed by President Radev are threatening to become the norm.
The president made his tortuous course between public condemnation of the Russian attack on Ukraine and Bulgarian “neutrality” a target for all these governments. Radev justifies his refusal of arms deliveries or Ukraine’s NATO membership with the concern that Bulgaria could be drawn into the war.
The “Bulgarian trace” of the explosion on the Crimean bridge, which has now been spread from Moscow, further fuels these debates. Kristian Winegin, MP and board member of the Bulgarian Socialist Party BSP, which, like Radev, is traditionally pro-Russian, but which is at odds with the president domestically, immediately called on Radev to “give a quick and clear signal and not allow Bulgaria to be drawn into the conflict in any way becomes”. The Kremlin’s official statement on the explosion over the Kerch Strait is grist to the mill of pro-Russian forces in Bulgaria.
The new saber-rattling against Bulgaria could also have another background, as Tihomir Bezlov explains: “The hostile pro-Western parties in the country have had a majority in parliament since the elections on October 2nd, 2022 and could opt for arms deliveries against the will of President Radev to Ukraine.” Ex-Prime Minister Boyko Borissov, whose party Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB) received the most votes in the October 2021 elections, reaffirmed his position to supply arms to Ukraine shortly after the polls want. For its part, the opposition party Democratic Bulgaria (DB) has announced that it intends to submit a corresponding motion to Parliament. Together with GERB and the party of Prime Minister Kiril Petkov, who was ousted in June 2022, “We continue the change” (PP), the three pro-Western and pro-Ukrainian parties would have a clear majority in the Bulgarian parliament.
To date, Bulgaria has not supplied heavy weapons to Ukraine, although it is an open secret that state and private arms companies export light weapons and ammunition through Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. In August 2022, there was an explosion in a warehouse belonging to arms dealer Emilijan Gebrew, for which the owner blamed Russian secret services.
On October 4th, 2022 there was another explosion in the state-owned armaments company “Arsenal”. The investigating authorities did not provide any information about a possible Russian background. However, Bulgaria’s geostrategic role as a logistical hub for goods essential to the war effort in the Ukraine conflict is becoming increasingly evident.
Autor: Christopher Nehring
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The Original of this post “Does a ‘Bulgarian Trail’ Lead to the Crimean Bridge Explosion?” comes from Deutsche Welle.
