Russia Urges Bulgaria to Refrain from 'Ill-Grounded' Claims

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova speaks during a news briefing in Moscow, Russia. File photo, EPA/BGNES

Moscow is hoping that Bulgarian authorities will refrain from ill-grounded accusations against Russia, the country's Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on Wednesday.

At a media briefing on current affairs, Maria Zakharova commented on Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev's recent interview with The Independent.

Plevneliev then accused Moscow of waging a hybrid war in Southeast Europe seeking to destabilize Bulgaria and the region.

He also blamed Moscow for the cyber attacks which hit several Bulgarian institutions on the day of local elections and a referendum on voting rules. The President suggested in the interview that only several countries in the world were capable of organizing such attacks. Just after the elections, he had also called the incident "sabotage".

Another accusation he hurled at Russia was that its air force was bolstering presence in the Black Sea region and was increasingly resorting to "incursions" into the security zone airspace there, with a number of violations of Bulgarian space as well.

But Zakharova made clear Russian aircraft had not breached Bulgaria's airspace and no such cases had been registered, RIA Novosti agency quotes her as saying.

On the cyber attack allegations, she said: "The President [Plevneliev] has come up with - and I am putting it mildly - a strange conclusion that precisely Russia is behind the recent cyber attacks on Bulgarian government institutions and the Central Election Commission of Bulgaria."

"If you look at the interview, what catches the eye is the absolute lack of arguments, clich?s that have been used or refuted already are used everywhere [in the text]," Zakharova asserted.

Other Russian media outlets quote her as saying Bulgarian authorities should look for the right advisors to prevent further "blatant mistakes" from happening.

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