Bulgaria opens a sabotage inquiry after a second EMCO depot fire

A fire broke out late on Friday, 11 September, at an EMCO ammunition store near Gorni Varpishta in Gabrovo Region, about 170 kilometres east of Sofia. Staff evacuated after the blaze showed up on cameras. A BG Alert went out. No one was injured. Isolated fires were still burning on Saturday morning but Interior Minister Ivan Demerdzhiev, speaking in Tsareva Livada, said they were not spreading and that no evacuation of nearby villages had been needed.

Demerdzhiev said authorities "are not ruling out outside interference." He said investigators would look at earlier fires at the same company and at other firms "to look for a possible connection or a similar pattern." Only one depot burned. The building was partly damaged. He said the site held far less ammunition than the EMCO store at Belitsa that exploded on 10 August, and that there was far less debris.

What EMCO says

EMCO is run by Emilian Gebrev, a Bulgarian arms trader whose munitions have gone to Ukraine. The company said on Saturday that the Gorni Varpishta depot had not been in use for months, that no one had entered it outside set procedures, and that the Interior Ministry had inspected it seven times this year, most recently 20 days earlier, with no findings. "The specific purpose of this depot completely rules out human error," the statement said. It called the fire part of "a series of acts of sabotage against the Bulgarian defence industry."

Slavcho Dimiev, who manages EMCO production, said the store held propellant compositions and a small quantity of medium-calibre rounds. Gabrovo Regional Governor Kristina Sidorova told BTA there were no fatalities. Gabrovo District Prosecutor Tihomir Petkov said witnesses had been questioned and that the scene would be examined once the counterterrorism directorate declared it safe.

The longer file on Gebrev

Bulgarian prosecutors have alleged that Russian operatives targeted Gebrev before. He, his son and an employee were poisoned in 2015. Three Russian nationals were later charged in absentia with attempted murder. In 2024 Bulgaria issued arrest warrants for six Russian citizens over the destruction of EMCO depots that stored munitions bound for Ukraine and Georgia between 2011 and 2020. Prosecutors said they saw links to the 2014 depot blasts in the Czech Republic. Moscow has dismissed the allegations.

Demerdzhiev said every ammunition depot in the country would now be inspected. He also said storage conditions and security for explosives had been neglected. Those two sentences sit side by side: sabotage as a working theory, and sloppy storage as a fact the minister is now willing to name.

The Special Counterterrorism Operations Directorate will decide when firefighters can enter. Until then the cause is an open file. Two EMCO sites in five weeks is the pattern the minister said he wants explained.