The Bulgarians recently convicted in the United Kingdom for spying on behalf of Russia are now also being investigated in Bulgaria. This was confirmed after a June 5 session of the parliamentary Committee for Oversight of the Security Services, where officials disclosed that separate pre-trial proceedings have been launched in connection with suspected espionage committed on Bulgarian soil by the same individuals.

The heads of Bulgaria’s key intelligence services—the State Agency for National Security (SANS), the State Intelligence Agency, and the Defence Intelligence Service - appeared before the committee. The session focused in part on the findings of investigative journalists Christo Grozev and Roman Dobrokhotov, whose work has raised serious allegations that Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, is running special operations and disinformation campaigns in Bulgaria.

Despite the gravity of those claims, the question of whether Bulgarian intelligence services have independently verified any of the presented evidence remains unanswered. When asked directly whether SANS possesses information confirming GRU activity in Bulgaria, Acting Chairman Denyo Denev refused to comment, citing the closed nature of the meeting. He gave no indication whether the agency had any corroborating intelligence or had taken any operational action based on the journalists’ investigation.

Atanas Atanasov, who heads the parliamentary oversight committee and previously led Bulgaria’s counterintelligence, stated plainly that the pre-trial investigation currently underway was initiated not because of Bulgarian findings, but because of intelligence obtained and shared by foreign services. “We have to be honest: if it weren’t for the work of those foreign agencies, we wouldn’t even know about this. Either our services don’t know what’s happening, or they’re not telling us,” Atanasov said. He pointed to a pattern - where espionage cases involving Bulgarian citizens are exposed not by domestic counterintelligence, but by allies abroad.

This isn’t the first time such allegations have surfaced. Grozev and Dobrokhotov’s investigation also links Russian military intelligence to a number of explosions at weapons depots in Bulgaria and to the attempted poisoning of arms manufacturer Emiliian Gebrev. The Bulgarian Prosecutor’s Office has reportedly collected evidence supporting those claims and has launched separate pre-trial proceedings into both the depot blasts and the Gebrev poisoning.

Yet Atanasov emphasized that SANS's mandate is not merely to investigate after the fact, but to prevent such operations from happening in the first place. “We’re talking about serious incidents - explosions, poisonings - and the role of our national security agency is to detect and stop these threats in advance. So where is that capability?” he asked.

At the heart of the criticism is the uncertainty surrounding the current reach and effectiveness of Bulgaria’s counterintelligence efforts. Even if Russian operatives are actively working in the country today, it’s not clear whether the national security services are even aware of it.