Revival leader Kostadin Kostadinov and his supporters gathered in front of the Russian Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. They gave DANS an ultimatum of 24 hours to return the priests.
Those who gathered blocked the traffic on Tsar Osvoboditel.
“What is happening to the Russian Orthodox Church will also happen to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. We must not allow this. DANS, which is a division of the CIA, expelled Russian clergymen,” said Subdeacon Atanas Stefanov. He gave a short course on church history, recalling that the Russian Orthodox Church was founded by Bulgarians – the first metropolitan of Kyiv was Kyprian.
“Are we their faith, are we their writing. We will be together forever,” said Stefanov.
He also accused the rulers of doing everything they could to “bring us into war” and called for resistance. “Not only to go to protests, but also to oppose them. There is Orthodoxy, there is Bulgaria. There is no Orthodoxy, there is no Bulgaria. We will not tolerate it,” Stefanov specified.
“We give an ultimatum to the branch of the CIA in Bulgaria, which is called DANS, to return the Russian priests. Russian and Bulgarian priests will open this Orthodox church hand in hand. This temple, which is locked by the CIA… If within 24 hours these American services do not fulfill the ultimatum, because they are not Bulgarian, we Bulgarians will take up this work and together we will open the temple”, Stefanov claims.
He called for the scaffolding placed in front of the monument to the Soviet Army to be removed as well.
On September 21, DANS expelled a Russian and two Belarusians. By order of the head of the agency, coercive administrative measures of “expulsion”, “deprivation of the right of residence” and “ban on entry into the Republic of Bulgaria” for a period of 5 (five) years were imposed on the following foreign citizens. The measures were imposed in connection with of them, activity directed against the national security and interests of the Republic of Bulgaria.
Data were obtained on the actions of the mentioned persons related to the implementation of various elements of the Russian Federation’s hybrid strategy for purposefully influencing the socio-political processes in the Republic of Bulgaria in favor of Russian geopolitical interests.
