EMCO calls the Gorni Varpishta depot fire sabotage as Sofia orders a national inspection

A fire and a string of explosions tore through an EMCO ammunition store near Gorni Varpishta, in Dryanovo municipality, on Friday night. No one was killed. Staff saw the fire on cameras and left. Interior Minister Ivan Demerdzhiev said on Saturday that isolated fires were not spreading, that only one depot had burned, and that every ammunition store in Bulgaria would now be inspected. He also said outside interference had not been ruled out.

EMCO, a private defence firm whose output is used by Ukraine, called the fire sabotage and said human error was “completely ruled out.” The company said the building had been unused for months and had passed an inspection 20 days earlier. Slavcho Dimiev, who runs EMCO’s unit at Belitsa, said the Gorni Varpishta site held propellant compositions and a small quantity of medium-calibre ammunition. That load produced fewer blasts and less debris than the 10 August fire at Belitsa, Demerdzhiev said. A BG Alert went out on Friday night. No village evacuation followed. Gabrovo regional governor Kristina Sidorova said the blaze did not jump to other property or forest.

The firm is run by Emilian Gebrev. Bulgarian prosecutors have already alleged that Russian agents tried to kill him, his son and an employee in 2015. Three Russian nationals were later charged in absentia. EMCO placed Friday’s fire in a “series of acts of sabotage against the Bulgarian defence industry.” The ministry has not adopted that sentence. It has adopted a national inspection and a refusal to close the sabotage file.

Demerdzhiev, speaking in Tsareva Livada, said storage conditions and security around explosives had been neglected across the country, and that sloppy practice does not cancel the possibility of an attack. The Special Counterterrorism Operations Directorate was to decide when it was safe to enter the pad and finish the fire. Drones were watching the site.

Two EMCO fires in five weeks is the pattern that matters. Belitsa in August, Gorni Varpishta in September, both at a company that supplies a war Russia wants to choke. That does not prove a Russian hand. It does explain why Sofia cannot treat the second fire as a warehouse accident and move on. A national inspection is the minimum political response. A named suspect would be a different kind of response, and that name is not in Saturday’s briefings.

The next public facts to demand are the inspection date on the 20-day certificate, an inventory of what actually burned, and whether the Belitsa and Gorni Varpishta inquiries have been joined. If those three items stay unpublished, the sabotage claim remains the company’s word against an empty official file. If they appear and still point away from accident, Demerdzhiev’s caution will look understated.