In pursuing their intelligence efforts in Bulgaria, Russian spy agencies rely on HUMINT, using assets recruited during the Soviet period, as well as on the Russian diaspora and families of local residents of Russian origin.
The main issues of interest to Russian intelligence in Bulgaria are about the country’s military potential.
Last week, Bulgarian authorities apprehended on espionage charges a Russian national, Sergei Zonenko, A mechanical researcher, Zonenko, 60, is an expert in the theory of explosions. Security officers also nabbed the suspect’s wife and son, both of whom hold Lithuanian passports. Bulgarian authorities believe, these two may be involved in spying for Russia across the Baltic States. On October 5, they were detained at the border with Greece while trying to flee the country. In their vehicle, missing paperwork and product samples were discovered that had earlier gone missing from the Arsenal plant, producer of artillery systems, firearms, and ammunition
Zonenko had lived in Bulgaria for eight years, working at Arsenal where he was in charge of the cumulative ammunition unit. According to the Bulgarian prosecutor’s office, Russian military intelligence had been exploring opportunities to set up an explosion at the plant’s warehouse. In 2020, the blast eventually did hit the depot at the plant where Zonenko worked. In April 2021, the Bulgarian prosecutors said they suspect Russian intelligence officers previously accused of blowing up a similar facility in the Czech Republic.
Back in 1987, Sergey Zonenko defended his degree with a thesis on the safety of nuclear reactors and is known for working on problems of the cumulation theory.
The tasks Zonenko had been performing in Bulgaria give reason to believe that Moscow is actively working in Eastern Europe to penetrate critical defense infrastructure, including military arsenals and defense factories, to learn about the level of the country’s combat capabilities, as well as to carry out outright sabotage as were the cases at the arms depots in the Czech Republic and Ukraine. At the same time, in Western Europe, Russian intelligence has not been called out such type of malign activity. This leads to a conclusion that Russian military spies seek to undermine the defenses of the former Warsaw bloc member states, which in turn may serve as an early warning of their plans to run blitz military campaigns in the said region. Another indirect confirmation of this assumption is that the Russians target data on military and technical cooperation of the region’s countries within the NATO framework. What the Russians are digging into is scenarios for NATO’s response to military challenges in each of the said countries.
Earlier, Sofia expelled six Russian diplomats, including a military attaché, who since 2017 had been collecting data on US military personnel taking part in joint drills on Bulgarian soil, including on their numbers and location.
In September 2020, Bulgaria expelled two Russian diplomats (GRU military intelligence operatives), who since 2016 had been collecting and handing to their HQ sensitive data on government plans for army modernization and technical maintenance.
Through political intelligence, the Russians are pursuing their efforts to create conditions for destabilizing Bulgaria, imposing on the population anti-NATO, anti-EU, as well as anti-US sentiments, while at the same time bringing pro-Russian political forces closer to power. As an example, in January 2020, Bulgarian prosecutors charged a duo of Russian diplomats with gathering intelligence on the country’s elections.
In Bulgaria, Russian military and political intelligence forces rather periodically run coordinated missions. One of the failed ones was an attempt in 2014 to acquire a local TV channel, set to be exploited as a Kremlin propaganda platform. This is about 7TV that was supposed to be acquired through a Bulgarian MP Nikolai Malin in the interests of a Russian oligarch, Konstantin Malofeev (GRU) and chief of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, Leonid Reshetnikov (SVR).
In October 2019, the Bulgarian prosecutor’s office accused a first secretary of the Russian embassy (an operative with the foreign intelligence), who had been gathering Bulgaria’s state secrets. He had been in the field since September 2018, holding regular clandestine meetings with Bulgarian nationals, including a high-ranking official with access to classified data related to Bulgaria, the EU, and NATO.
In 2020, two Bulgarian military intelligence operatives were arrested on charges of intelligence gathering in favor of Russia. The inquiry learned that the group had more members to it. According to the local prosecutor’s office, the ring a former high-ranking official with the Bulgarian military intelligence was at the helm, tasked with his superior handlers with create a human asset network. The ring leader recruited individuals with access to sensitive information on Bulgarian, EU, and NATO affairs.
According to a prosecutor’s office official, the exposed intelligence officer’s spouse, a dual citizen of Russia and Bulgaria, was also part of the spy group. She acted as an intermediary between the actor on the ground and staff at Russia’s Embassy in Bulgaria.
The team also included an employee of the Bulgarian Defense Ministry.
The latest case proves that Russian intelligence agencies actively employ Russian-born immigrants who have married local citizens serving with the targeted country’s government. It has long become obvious it’s a government-run Rossotrudnichestvo that has been entrusted with identifying such persons of interest.
Energy is another, separate field of interest for Russian spies. For obvious reasons, Moscow is looking into the energy potential of each EU member state in order to fine-tune their calculations in provoking energy crises. It is highly probable it was precisely the intelligence data obtained in the said field that allowed Moscow inflating gas prices across Europe in September-October 2021. It is also likely that the Kremlin is mulling a possibility of orchestrating a full-scale energy crisis in Europe, which in turn would be aimed at creating conditions for the EU disintegration and having the European sanctions policy lifted.
