Bulgaria is a country that doesn’t often feature on Britain’s radar – beyond being a location for cheap package holidays and even cheaper wine. But the arrest of three Bulgarian citizens who have lived in Britain for a long time and are being charged with spying for Russia may change that.
For the country bordering the Black Sea has long been Russia’s closest ally in Eastern Europe, and Moscow has a history of outsourcing its dirtier espionage operations to its Slavic sister state.
During the Cold War, Bulgaria was the most reliably compliant of the Kremlin’s Warsaw Pact vassal states.
Bulgaria shares its Orthodox religion, its Cyrillic script and linguistic similarities with its big Russian brother, and during the Cold War was the most reliably compliant of the Kremlin’s Warsaw Pact vassal states.
In September 1978 the exiled Bulgarian writer Georgi Markov was waiting for a bus on London’s Waterloo Bridge when he felt a sharp pain in his thigh.
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