“It’s clear that these [name] lists are not for eliminating people, but also do not contribute to good relations,” the Chair of the Parliamentary Committee for Control of the Security Services, Daniel Mitov (GERB-UDF), told journalists in Parliament after the Committee held a hearing of the heads of security services about the Ukrainian Myrotvorets website.
MPs from the Committee heard on Thursday the heads of the State Agency for National Security (SANS) and the State Intelligence Agency (SIA), Plamen Tonchev and Antoan Ganchev, the Director of the Defense Intelligence Service, Brig. Gen. Venelin Venev, and the head of the National Service for Protection, Brig. Gen. Emil Tonev, about the Myrotvorets website, which has a database of persons, including Bulgarian citizens, who are described as enemies of Ukraine.
It would be nice if Bulgarian citizens do not find themselves on lists, which can be interpreted in certain ways, Mitov said. He said that there will be work with Ukraine to make it clear that such platforms do not create conditions for good communication.
This website has been brought to the attention of serious international organizations, such as G-7, the UN, the European Commission, which have had initiatives trying to limit the platform’s actions, especially when it comes to publishing personal information of people without their consent, Mitov said, adding that these initiatives did not yield results.
According to Mitov, Bulgaria needs to support such initiatives, so that the publications and the way this website functions can be restricted. The security services will conduct an assessment to find out if there is a potential threat and will inform Parliament, he added.
Since February 2021, the European Parliament has been insisting that the Myrotvorets website, which has lists of names of people designated as “enemies” of Ukraine, with the understanding that they should be eliminated, to be shut down, MEP Elena Yoncheva said, who has been listed on the website since 2018.
The Ukrainian Embassy in Bulgaria issued a position earlier on Thursday, saying that the work of the Myrotvorets organization is not related in any way to the work of the Ukrainian State institutions and does not represent Ukraine’s official policies.
Earlier on Thursday, BSP for Bulgaria said they will submit an alert to SANS demanding that the security services be heard about the Myrotvorets website.
Vazrazhdane party leader Kostadin Kostadinov said in the National Assembly on Tuesday that the founders and contributors of the Ukrainian website Myrotvorets (myrotvorets.center) should be held liable. The party came up with a declaration saying that yet another Bulgarian, journalist Dilyana Gaitandzhieva, has been added to the Myrotvorets running list of people who are considered by authors of the website to be “enemies of Ukraine”.
