“We are witnessing an intensification of the Russian hybrid war against Bulgaria,” Assoc. Prof. Momchil Doychev, co-chairman of the Atlantic Council in Bulgaria said at a press conference, the Bulgarian news agency BTA reports.

“This war is taking place using trolls, bots and mushroom websites, spreading fake information about the war in Ukraine,” he said further. This is part of the three-hundred-year old tradition of Russia’s conducting subversive hybrid operations – we are fighting the myths underlying our education, the speculations that Russia is a country-liberator.

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“The people known as “kopecks” have occupied the media, and are tacitly receiving the support of a number of institutions among them the president, political parties, special services, the Bulgarian Orthodox church and others. We are seeing more and more attempts to transform verbal aggression into physical aggression,” said Momchil Doychev, and made a connection between this phenomenon and the political party Vazrazhdane.

The Atlantic Council has analyzed around 50,000 articles posted over four years by the website Pogled.info. More than 23,000 of them have been reposted from Russian media outlets which are under EU sanctions, the other co-chairman of the Atlantic Council Ivan Anchev said. He stated further that the matter will be referred to the Communications Regulation Commission, the State Agency for National Security and the prosecutor’s office with data from the analysis. “The enemy is no longer at the gate, he is inside our home,” he said.

Edited by Diana Tsankova
Translated and posted by Milena Daynova
Photo: BTA