Posted on 12/22/2019 7:07:49 AM PST by karpov
SOFIA, Bulgaria — The Russian assassin used an alias, Sergei Fedotov, and slipped into Bulgaria unnoticed, checking into a hotel in Sofia near the office of a local arms manufacturer who had been selling ammunition to Ukraine.
He led a team of three men.
Within days, one man sneaked into a locked parking garage, smeared poison on the handle of the arms manufacturer’s car, then left, undetected, except for blurry images captured by surveillance video.
Shortly after, the arms manufacturer, Emilian Gebrev, was meeting with business partners at a rooftop restaurant when he began to hallucinate and vomit.
The poisoning left Mr. Gebrev, now 65, hospitalized for a month. His son was poisoned, and so was another top executive at his company. When Mr. Gebrev was discharged, the assassins poisoned him and his son again, at their summer home on the Black Sea. They all survived, though Mr. Gebrev’s business has yet to recover fully.
The assassination attempts in 2015 were remarkable not only for their brazenness and persistence, but also because security and intelligence officials in the West initially did not notice. Bulgarian prosecutors looked at the case, failed to unearth any evidence and closed it.
Now Western security and intelligence officials say the Bulgaria poisonings were a critical clue that helped expose a campaign by the Kremlin and its sprawling web of intelligence operatives to eliminate Russia’s enemies abroad and destabilize the West.
“With Bulgaria, there was an ‘aha’ moment,” said one European security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss classified intelligence matters. “We looked at it and thought, damn, everything aligned.”
Entering his third decade in power, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is pushing hard to re-establish Russia as a world power.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Your reply settles it for me:
“Well if the intelligence agencies say this is what happened, I guess that’s it. I mean, after all they found wmds all over Iraq, they figured out the Syrian gas attacks oh, and they figured out Trump was a Russian spy. Nobody else would have a motive to kill an east European arms merchant.”
Plus the Shampeachment is proof the Russians are responsible worldwide for anything that happens!
The CIA can do things and make it look like someone else did it. Just a rumor I’ve heard.
More like they never worked for Russia in the first place.
Oh yep. Like all those washed out Russian ‘dissident’.
Demonize Russia ! Still you morons ? After 3 years of mule head ?
Good point.
Plus, it would have looked like suicide.
Vince Foster: He was Epstein, before Epstein not killing himself was cool.
Be a shame if Russia did something about this smear from the NY Times...
Maybe they never intended to kill the guy, just send a message—not that I’d grieve too much for an arms dealer.
I wonder if the same guy struck the Congress a few years ago. They’ve been hallucinating ever since.
There are the US version involving obama and clinton targeting of their enemies. obama had hundreds killed in Mexico.
2 died during the 2016 campaign. One scheduled to testify against the clintons and another for leaking information to Bernie Sanders.
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