Fire tore through an ammunition depot belonging to the Bulgarian arms maker EMCO overnight on 12 September, according to RFE/RL. Nobody was hurt, and the interior minister says sabotage is among the versions being examined. It was the second fire at a site of the company, which supplies ammunition to Ukraine, in little over a month.

The warehouses burned one after another

The blaze started near the village of Gorni Varpishta, between Tryavna and Tsareva Livada in Dryanovo municipality. It was visible from Veliko Tarnovo, whose mayor, Daniel Panov, said the fire began around 23:00 on Friday. Gabrovo provincial governor Kristina Sidorova told reporters the fire had taken the depot base and was moving from one store to the next, and she had residents of nearby settlements warned through the BG-Alert emergency system.

Residents nearby heard a series of explosions. Two security guards were the only people on the site and both left in time, Bulgarian media reported. The nearest settlement lies more than a kilometer away, and firefighters ringed the area. EMCO production manager Slavcho Dimiev confirmed to Bulgarian National Television that the store held ammunition and powder, and he told Reuters it mainly contained ammunition, including a small quantity of medium-caliber rounds.

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Sabotage among the versions

Interior Minister Ivan Demerdzhiev said on Saturday the fire was under control and an investigation was running.

"We will review previous cases in which similar fires occurred in the warehouses of this company, as well as at other companies, in order to look for a possible connection or a similar pattern," he said. "We are not ruling out outside interference."

Every ammunition depot in the country will now be inspected, Demerdzhiev said, because storage and security at such sites have been neglected. Dimiev also called for extra protection, saying that if the depots were being targeted, the attack was on the national interest rather than on one company. Lawmaker Bozhidar Bozhanov said the fires are too many and are aimed at one firm, whose owner Russian military intelligence tried to kill, and asked when the state would act.

The owner Russia tried to poison

EMCO belongs to Bulgarian arms trader Emilian Gebrev. He and his plants have been targeted repeatedly in operations attributed to Russian military intelligence over his ammunition deliveries to Ukraine. Gebrev, his son, and a colleague survived a Novichok poisoning attempt in 2015. In 2020 prosecutors charged three Russians whom investigators identified as officers of Russian military intelligence, the GRU.

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In 2024 Bulgaria issued arrest warrants for six Russians over EMCO depots destroyed between 2011 and 2020, which held rounds bound for Ukraine and Georgia. Prosecutors said they had grounds to suspect links between those blasts, the poisoning, and the 2014 explosions in Vrbětice, Czechia, that killed two. Moscow denies all of it. Bulgaria supplied Ukraine with weapons until this year's government moved to stop the transfers.

A month earlier, another EMCO site

Explosions and fire hit another EMCO depot on 10 August. Demerdzhiev said at the time that the preliminary version pointed away from external factors.

Founded in 1992, EMCO produces, repairs, and modernizes ammunition and military equipment. The Telegraph reported in late August, citing Western intelligence sources, that Russia had launched a fresh wave of attacks on European defense plants using local criminal groups.

Germany's authorities suspect Russian intelligence behind an arson attack on a defense firm last week, Estonia investigated a suspected arson at a military robot maker supplying Ukraine in August, and Czech police arrested four suspects over a fire at a plant making drones and thermal optics for Ukraine.