Fire at Bulgarian arms factory of businessman poisoned by GRU agents

On the night of 24-25 June, a large-scale fire broke out in the storage point of the EMKO arms company near the Bulgarian town of Karnobat. This facility is owned by businessman Emilian Gebrev, and the owner suspects that it was an intentional arson attack.

Source: European Pravda, referring to Balkan Radio Liberty service 

Details: According to Gebrev, the current fire broke out at around 00:40 on Sunday, and fortunately, none of the base's security guards were injured. He called the incident "uncertain" as there were no products in the burned storage point that could have caught fire on their own.

"I can't say what the reasons are," Gebrev added in an interview with Radio Liberty.

The fire was the second fire in a row at this facility after ammunition detonated in another storage point on 31 July 2022. Since then, an investigation has been ongoing, and the prosecutor's office has not released any official information about its progress.

"No one told me anything, as if nothing had happened," Gebrev said, adding that investigators had not been trying to contact him at all after the latest incident.

Earlier, a Bulgarian arms dealer who survived the alleged Novichok nerve agent poisoning in 2015 said he was "100% sure" that Russian specialists were behind the explosion and subsequent fire in July 2022 (Novichok is a group of nerve agents, some of which are binary chemical weapons, primarily used by Russian secret services for poisoning opponents – ed.). 

Gebrev fell into a coma in 2015, and Western authorities and intelligence agencies believe that he was poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent by officers of Russia's military intelligence service, the GRU.

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