Bulgaria deported two Russian diplomats for espionage and gave them 48 hours to return home.

"We are obliged to do so and announce their deportation," Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ekaterina Zharieva said yesterday after announcing the findings of prosecutors in the country.

Bulgarian prosecutors say a secretary at the Russian consulate has been engaged in espionage since 2017 to gather information about the country's elections. The second diplomat working in the trade representative office in the capital Sofia has been accused of gathering information on energy security since October 2018, including a number of national secrets.

The Russian embassy in Bulgaria criticized the decision, saying the action of disclosing information before informing the embassy was "incompatible with the spirit of building relations between the two countries".

Bulgaria is a close ally of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Russia remains Bulgaria's largest energy supplier, though relations between the two countries have had some tensions. Bulgaria refused to support European Union (EU) nations in the expulsion of Russian diplomats in response to the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Britain in 2018.