Plevneliev
© www.filmneweurope.comBulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev
Russia's Foreign Ministry dismissed Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev's claims that Russia is plotting "hybrid warfare" in the Balkans, urging Sofia to avoid unfounded accusations. The Bulgarian leader made his statements in a recent interview with The Independent:
Rosen Plevneliev accuses Moscow of launching massive cyber attacks on Bulgaria's government institutions and increasingly testing Bulgaria's airspace in the wake of the annexation last year of Crimea, on the other side of the Black Sea. "The very efficient and secure way for Russia to destabilise Europe is through the Balkans, so that is what Mr. Putin is focusing on." Pointing the finger firmly at Russia's President, Vladimir Putin, he said: "There are very few countries in the world that can organise such attacks."

Mr. Plevneliev said NATO senior partners were not being forceful enough in responding to Russia's "hybrid warfare" approach that, he says, is focused on the Balkans. "Everyone should be alerted to what happens in Syria because of a crush of global and regional powers, which Mr. Putin is saying is about the world moving to a new world order away from that of being dominated by one superpower." Mr Plevneliev accused Western leaders, and especially EU member states, of failing to act until a crisis had fully erupted.
"The president drew some strange conclusions, to put it mildly, that Russia is behind recent cyberattacks on Bulgarian government websites and the central election committee," Zakharova told reporters on Thursday. "An absolute shortage of argument is immediately noticeable when you look at this interview."

"We hope that in the future, the politicians of a country whose people share centuries of friendly relations with Russia, will refrain from such baseless, very loud, and very strange statements," she added.