First posted on Instagram
On the evening of Thursday, October 22, an officer of Bulgaria's National Service for Protection shoved journalist Sonya Koltuklieva to the ground outside the Progressive Bulgaria party headquarters in Sofia, as she tried to question Parliament Speaker Mihaela Dotsova. Koltuklieva, a veteran reporter for the digital news outlet PIK, had waited for Dotsova to emerge from a closed-door meeting of the governing party — one that Prime Minister Rumen Radev also attended — to ask why parliamentary hearings had stalled over President Iliana Iotova's controversial pardon of convicted drug trafficker Ognyan Atanasov, known as the "Petrich Escobar." Video footage shows Koltuklieva opening the door of the official car where Dotsova was already seated; at that moment a security officer pushed her, and she fell backward onto the pavement, where she lay motionless. The footage shows the car and its convoy driving away without anyone stopping to help her.
Koltuklieva was taken to the Military Medical Academy in Sofia. According to her, doctors diagnosed a fractured shoulder; her outlet PIK reported she also suffered a dislocated shoulder, a broken collarbone and concussion, though the hospital declined to confirm a diagnosis, citing medical confidentiality. On Thursday she wrote on Facebook that she was on painkillers and that doctors would decide that day whether to operate on her shoulder; she had by then been admitted to the Sveta Sofia hospital in the capital. "What happened was brutal and cruel. How was I a threat to Mihaela Dotsova?! With a phone?" she wrote.
Shortly after midnight on October 23, the Military Prosecutor's Office detained the officer involved after an initial interrogation — Bulgarian media identified him as Martin Varadinov — and a criminal investigation was opened into whether the state security detail used disproportionate force.
Dotsova later appeared at the prosecutor's office for questioning, then apologized to Koltuklieva, saying she had been startled by the encounter and had not seen exactly how the incident unfolded. She called what happened "absolutely unacceptable" and pledged to demand strict disciplinary action against the officers assigned to her detail. President Iliana Iotova condemned the officer's actions as an "unacceptable and excessive reaction" that could not be justified by the performance of official duties, saying journalists must be able to do their work freely and without fear — and that she would demand the resignation of National Service for Protection chief Emil Tonev. Opposition parties in parliament called on Dotsova to take political responsibility and resign.