"In parallel with Russia's aggressive military actions, we are facing an unprecedented increase in various hybrid attacks aimed at undermining Bulgaria's stability and thereby our democratic values and processes".

This was said by the Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nikolay Milkov, at the opening of the conference "Responding to the Challenges in the Fragmenting Security Architecture: Countering Russian Hybrid Activities", organized by the Sofia Security Forum.

"Russian aggression, which is taking place in close proximity to Bulgaria's borders, represents a gross violation of the international legal order and dealt a serious blow to the existing architecture of international security, leading to significant consequences for public and political life - including in Bulgaria", commented Milkov.

"Russia uses a full arsenal of hybrid tactics, instrumentalization of energy and basic food supplies, cyber activities of control over sensitive technologies, unprecedented strengthening of propaganda aimed at internal political destabilization of our societies - provoking discontent and reducing solidarity with Ukraine", he added.

According to him, all this has led to a fundamentally changed security environment that is immediately around us and has forced NATO and the EU to take certain reactions.

Nikolay Milkov noted that 2% of GDP defense spending is already accepted as a minimum in NATO. He pointed out that next year Bulgaria will reach this threshold of military spending.

The Sofia Security Forum is one of the few non-governmental organizations that does not benefit from state aid, the minister pointed out. "In this vacuum of serious expertise on the issues of security and foreign relations, all kinds of discussion, to put it mildly, find ground. The debate is instrumentalized, elementalized, used for short-term and immediate political dividends. This opens up the possibility of more and more malevolent hybrid influences where they are present", Nikolay Milkov said.

According to the minister, things have greatly deepened in the last two years, during which we are in a constant pre-election situation. According to his words, dividing lines are drawn that do not exist as they are described.

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