Bulgaria examines link between Skripal and Sofia poisonings

Bulgaria is investigating a possible link between a nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy in England in 2018 and the poisoning of an arms dealer in Sofia in 2015.

Bulgarian chief prosecutor Sotir Tsatsarov said on Monday that Sergei Fedotov, a suspect in the attempted killing of former spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, visited Bulgaria three times in 2015 and was there in April when local arms dealer Emilian Gebrev was poisoned.

In October 2018, Russian news website Fontanka named Fedotov, who it said worked for the country’s GRU military intelligence service, as the third suspect in the Skripal case.

Tsatsarov said prosecutors had compiled significant data on Fedotov’s trips to Bulgaria as part of an investigation that was reopened in October into Gebrev’s poisoning.

Britain said former double agent Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with Novichok, an agent developed by the Soviet Union, and has accused two other men it says are GRU officers of the attack.

Moscow has repeatedly denied any involvement in the poisoning, from which both Skripals recovered. Last week, the Kremlin questioned the credibility of a report linking the incidents in Britain and Bulgaria.

Tsatsarov gave no further details on why he considered Fedotov as a suspect.

He said that a Finnish laboratory had been unable to identify the poison used on Gebrev and found no substances on the Chemical Weapons Convention banned list in his urine.

Gebrev, like the Skripals, also survived.

2015 the year in which a Bulgarian arms dealer was poisoned in Sofia