Bulgaria expels 70 Russian diplomats: PM

SOFIA, June 28 (Xinhua) -- Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov has announced Tuesday that his country has decided to expel 70 Russian diplomats as special services have identified the diplomats as people who work against Bulgaria's interests.

The prime minister submitted the resignation of his coalition government to the National Assembly on Monday, after it was ousted in a no-confidence motion.

Meanwhile, the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) said on its website that the 70 Russians should leave the country by midnight on July 3.

The Russians had carried out activities "incompatible with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations," the ministry said.

At a meeting with the Russian Ambassador to Bulgaria, Eleonora Mitrofanova, on Tuesday, the ministry said that the number of staff at the Russian missions in Bulgaria should not exceed the number of staff at the Bulgarian missions in Russia.

This should be no more than 23 diplomats and 25 administrative and technical staff, it said.

Korneliya Ninova, Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), said that "the decision to expel 70 Russian diplomats is an unprecedented act in Bulgarian diplomacy that will have long-term consequences."

It was not taken by the Council of Ministers, nor by the council of the ruling coalition, Ninova said.

"The BSP strongly disagrees with this decision," she underlined.

Bulgaria expelled 12 Russian diplomats in March and one in April.