Pro-Russian politician arrested in Bulgaria for leaking state secrets – Euractiv

Zlatomir Dyovlensky, a local leader of the National Russophile Movement in Plovdiv, was arrested on suspicion of leaking state secrets. This is another case involving the movement, whose national leader has been on trial since 2022 for spying for Russia.

The two were arrested on Monday by the public prosecutor’s office and the State Agency for National Security (SANS), along with a former SANS agent. They were charged the following Tuesday and released on bail. Both are not allowed to leave the country during the investigation.

Dyovlensky was taken by counterintelligence officers to the BSP headquarters in Plovdiv, which is also used by the Russophile movement, confirmed Ivan Petkov, a deputy of another pro-Russian party, the Bulgarian Socialist Party.

The 33-year-old “Russophile” – also a doctoral student at Astrakhan State University in Russia – worked as an expert in the “Coordination and Projects” department of the nearby Rodopi municipality in Plovdiv, where the former SANS agent also worked.

Dyovlensky, who also ran for the Bulgarian Socialist Party in the April 2021 elections, was charged as an instigator and the former SANS agent as a perpetrator, said Galin Gavrailov, deputy prosecutor in Plovdiv.

“The arrest was carried out in a brutal manner by breaking down the door of his apartment in Plovdiv at 5:30 a.m. this morning,” said BSP MP Ivan Petkov, who is close to the arrested man’s family.

Nikolai Malinov, the national leader of the Russophile movement, who was also sanctioned under the US Magnitsky Act, has been on trial since 2022 for spying for Russia.

(Krassen Nikolov | Euractiv.bg)

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