Deputy Defense Minister: There is No Military Threat to Bulgaria

"The statement of the Russian MP Pyotr Tolstoy is impudent, inadmissible, unacceptable and does not correspond to international law and normal relations between countries", Deputy Defense Minister Atanas Zapryanov told BTV today. He specified that he did not accept what was said as a direct military threat.

This comes on the occasion of the words of the Russian MP Pyotr Tolstoy, who is the deputy chairman of the Russian Duma (the lower house of the Federal Assembly - the parliament of Russia).

In a program broadcast on the local television "Russia 1", after Tolstoy says that Russia must control the Black Sea, he adds:

"There are still our citizens in Bulgaria along the coast. Demonstrations will start there, don't worry. In that sense, we don't have any problems there."

Next comes a question from the presenter: "Shall we just shoot?".

"We will shoot, but first we have to finish with Ukraine," says Tolstoy, including in the answer the country with which Russia started a war on February 24, 2022.

"This statement is a symptom of the thinking in Putin's close entourage and how these people quite frivolously consider the military tool as a means of neo-imperial ambitions and so frivolously talk about war against countries that are members of NATO. Let the Bulgarians be calm, there is no military threat to our country. We should not get attached to Tolstoy's propaganda suggestions," Zapryanov explained.

He added that at the high-level meeting in Vilnius, NATO once again announced that it will respond overwhelmingly to any aggression against its member. "We already have regional plans. On the territory of the country there is a multinational battle group with a framework country, Italy, which a few weeks ago held an exercise and showed readiness to grow to a brigade. In the event of an attack on the territory of Bulgaria, it is known within a few days which forces and where they will come from. I think that these propaganda statements of politicians like Mr. Tolstoy aim above all to instill fear. To destabilize the population in Bulgaria and Romania and to mobilize their proxies to resist aid, which we are giving to Ukraine", said the Deputy Minister of Defense.

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