Court in Bulgaria acquitted the leader of a pro-Russian lobby group of charges of spying for Russia. This was reported by the AFP agency on Friday, which got acquainted with the court documents, writes TASR. It is not yet known whether the prosecution will appeal against this verdict.
Nikolay Malinov leads The International Movement of Russophiles (Rusofilis), which is the largest pro-Russian non-governmental organization in Bulgaria. He was accused in that country of joining the services of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISS) between 2013 and 2019 and being a spy collected information constituting a state secret, intending to make it public.
Malinov was also accused from revealing the identity of a person helping state intelligence servicesas well as data that could help identify undercover intelligence officers. Shortly after his arrest, in 2019, Bulgarian judge Andon Mitalov allowed Malinov to travel to Russia, where he President Vladimir Putin personally presented the Order of Friendship award.
In 2020, the US Department of State designated Judge Mitalov as a person “involved in significant corruption” and in 2023 again imposed sanctions on Malinov. In 2025, the Council of the European Union designated the movement led by Malinov as an organization “responsible for spreading destabilizing narratives of the government of the Russian Federation around the world” and also imposed sanctions on him.
