NEW: NATO ally expels undercover Russian spy by JennaMC_Laugh
WASHINGTON — On Oct. 30, the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry delivered a rare warning to a Russian diplomat stationed in Sofia, the capital: Leave the country within 24 hours.
The Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to comment on Rusyaev’s case, and the Russian Defense Ministry and Russian Embassy in Bulgaria did not respond to a request for comment. Rusyaev, whose name appears to have only surfaced in a single Bulgarian-language news outlet, is the latest in a long string of GRU officers exposed and expelled from Western countries in recent years for spying or mounting aggressive covert operations against Western targets, revealing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s willingness to encourage aggression and boldness in his operators overseas.
The GRU has also attempted to infiltrate a range of European countries to access classified information, some of which, including the Baltic countries, Poland and Norway, for example, have been open about exposing and either convicting them or expelling them within recent months and years. Bulgaria has closer relations to Russia than other NATO and EU countries, and generally attempts to avoid antagonizing Moscow.
The exposure of Rusyaev’s attempted recruitment and his subsequent expulsion is just the latest public embarrassment for the GRU, whose specific efforts have been revealed by government entities and investigative media outlets like Bellingcat. However, the service continues to operate unimpeded. Foreign officials have privately mocked the GRU for its mistakes, but simultaneously worry that for every failure, there are a number of successful operations that go undetected.
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