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ATHENS 

Russia conducts hybrid war against Bulgaria and ethnic Bulgarians living in eastern Ukraine, Bulgarian Foreign Minister Georg Georgiev said on Monday.

“Russia is employing propaganda and hybrid methods against countries it views as hostile, including Bulgaria,” Georgiev said in a written response to a question posed by lawmaker from the centrist We Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria party (WCC-DB), according to Sofia News Agency.

Arguing that Russia uses all possible avenues, especially in the spheres of education and culture, to advance its political propaganda, he said: “Data from the Education Ministry show certain student competitions have been used to push Russian geopolitical narratives, and some collaborations between Bulgarian schools and pro-Russian organizations involve practices that are entirely unacceptable.”

Georgiev said ethnic Bulgarians in eastern Ukraine have seen their right to study Bulgarian curtailed.

Bulgarian Sunday schools in Melitopol and Berdyansk, which are funded by Bulgaria, have been forced to stop offering in-person classes while the Bulgarian-Ukrainian lyceum in Primorsk was shut down, he said.

Georgiev underscored that Kremlin portraying the country’s efforts to counter Russian propaganda as Russophobia is a distortion of the documented evidence of hybrid attacks targeting democratic institutions in Bulgaria.