Bulgaria will arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin if he enters the country, Bulgaria’s top prosecutor said.

Chief Prosecutor Ivan Geshev made the comments in an interview with the Faktor.bg during a visit to Ukraine.

On March 17, the ICC in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Putin, considered responsible for war crimes committed during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The order obligates countries to which he travels to arrest him if they are parties to the court’s statute.

„Bulgaria, like all countries that are parties to the ICC Statute, has an immediate obligation to detain Vladimir Putin, if he is on (our) territory, and to hand him over to the International Criminal Court,” Geshev said.

Geshev’s visited the Ukrainian cities of Bucha and Borodyanka on Friday.

„You have to see the collapsed apartment blocks and the killed civilians to realize that we cannot allow the return to the darkest times of human history to continue,” he told Faktor.bg.

„Malicious Russian influence in our country illegally attack the state prosecution and me in particular on a daily basis,” he added.

Geshev announced that he  and his Ukrainian counterpart Andriy Kostin signed a memorandum of understanding and cooperation. The two sides agreed „on active cooperation in the investigation of crimes related to Russian aggression in Ukraine, in particular crimes against humanity, war crimes, crimes of aggression and genocide.”

„Ivan Geshev and Andriy Kostin also discussed the creation of joint teams to investigate war crimes. The Prosecutor General of Ukraine said that since the beginning of the war, more than 80,000 cases of war crimes, aggression and genocide have been registered against the Ukrainian people, more than 10,000 are against civilians, women and children. Charges have been brought against 152 people and 32 have been convicted,” the Ukrainian  prosecutor’s office reported.

Geshev also introduced his colleague to the role of the Bulgarian prosecutor’s office in countering the Russian military and intelligence services in Bulgaria and the Balkans.

He said the countries were vulnerable and susceptible to malicious Russian influence.

Bulgaria together with Hungary are the only NATO and EU members to have officially refused to deliver arms to Ukraine, echoing the popular belief that doing so would drag these countries into the conflict.

Bulgaria’s previous government had to secretly provide Kyiv with ammunition and fuel, concealing the fact from the public.

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