A significant explosion resulted in a fire at an arms depot located in central Bulgaria during the night, according to local media and Bulgarian officials. This incident marks the second fire at a munitions facility in recent weeks.
Fortunately, no casualties have been reported from the fire, which broke out near the village of Tsareva Livada, visible as a bright glow in the night sky in local video recordings.
Kristina Sidorova, the governor of the Gabrovo region, informed reporters early Saturday that “the fire is currently within the storage area of the factory and is spreading from one depot to another.”
Local news stated, citing a representative of the company EMCO, that the fire occurred at a site operated by EMCO, which had experienced an explosion at another facility last month.
A powerful explosion, followed by smaller blasts, also occurred on August 10 at an EMCO depot.
EMCO is led by Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Gebrev, who has been alleged by Bulgarian prosecutors to have been targeted in previous attacks on his facilities by Russian agents.
In 2024, Bulgaria issued an arrest warrant for six Russian nationals accused of involvement in the destruction of EMCO’s arms depots, which stored munitions intended for export to Ukraine and Georgia between 2011 and 2020.
Prosecutors at that time suggested that there were reasonable grounds to believe connections existed between the explosions in Bulgaria, a poisoning attempt on Gebrev in 2015, and explosions at munitions depots in the Czech Republic in 2014. Moscow has denied these accusations.
Factory’s Connection to Ukraine
The private Bulgarian defense company EMCO, owned by Gebrev, supplies munitions to Ukraine.
In 2023, another explosion occurred at a different EMCO factory in Karnobat, where munitions were stored for shipment to Ukraine. Gebrev himself dismissed the possibility that the explosion was accidental or due to human error. A fire had occurred at the same factory a year earlier.
Gebrev also stored munitions destined for Ukraine at a depot in the Czech Republic, which suffered an explosion in 2014, for which the Czech government blamed the Russian intelligence service, GRU.
In April 2015, the businessman was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok, the same agent used by GRU operatives in the attempted assassination of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in 2018.
