Moscow has reacted angrily to Bulgaria’s decision to expel the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Sofia, calling the move “blasphemous” and an “unfriendly” act as it closed the Russian Church in the Bulgarian capital in response.
The Russian state news agency TASS reported on September 22 that the Bulgarian ambassador to Moscow Atanas Krastin would be summoned for talks at the Russian Foreign Ministry over the expulsion of Archimandrite Vassian and two other clerics, both Belarusian citizens, for carrying out “activities directed against” the country's national security and interests.
Bulgaria’s State Agency for National Security (DANS) said the three had worked to “purposefully influence the social and political processes in Bulgaria in favor of Russian geopolitical interests.”
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the clerics were summoned to Bulgaria’s immigration service on September 21 and were handed a notice to leave the country within 24 hours.
It added that the three were transported “like criminals in a vehicle with barred windows” back to the church to pack their belongings and added that they would be transported to the Serbian border.
Bulgarian authorities have not given any details on the whereabouts of the clerics.
“We are outraged and shocked by what happened,” the ministry’s spokeswoman Mariya Zaharova said in the statement, adding that the responsibility for the “rapid deterioration of Russian-Bulgarian relations lies entirely with the Bulgarian side.”
Russia's ambassador to Bulgaria, Eleonora Mitrofanova, added in an interview on state television that Russia would not take action directly against the Bulgarian Church in Moscow.
Archimandrite Vassian, whose secular name is Nikolai Zmeyev, was appointed by the Moscow Patriarchate as head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Sofia in 2018 -- days after the Russian Patriarch Kirill visited Bulgaria.
Questions over Archimandrite Vassian have swirled around Bulgaria for several months.
Earlier this month, lawmaker Atanas Atanasov called the cleric “a representative of Russian intelligence in a robe.”
In December 2022, the Russian Orthodox Church in Sofia faced protests against the visit of a high-ranking representative of the Moscow Patriarchate, invited by Archimandrite Vassian.
The decision to expel the three clerics comes amid Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which the Russian Orthodox Church has supported.
The European Union imposed sanctions as a response to Moscow’s war, and Russia added the EU member states, including Bulgaria, to its list of “unfriendly countries.”
In 2022, Bulgaria, a member of NATO and the European Union, expelled 70 Russian diplomatic staff in a move that severely strained diplomatic ties between the two countries, which were close allies during communist times.