Bulgaria has denied the use of its airspace for Russian cargo flights to Syria because of concerns over whether the "humanitarian" cargo that Moscow was sending to the war-torn country had a military purpose.
Bulgaria's Foreign Ministry insisted that it had made the decision independently, although the decision reportedly followed a US request to Greece not to allow Russian cargo flights to pass through its airspace en route to Syria, apparently because of concerns that Russia was heightening its military presence in Syria.
Bulgaria's Foreign Ministry said it had "refused to issue permits for flights through Bulgarian airspace of Russian military transport aircraft en route from the Russian Federation to Syria in the period between September 1 and 24, 2015". It added: "We have information which gives us grounds to doubt the correctness of the information stated in the request about the purpose of the flights and the cargo transported."
Nikolay Levichev, a Russian politician and lawmaker specializing in international affairs, told Russia's TASS news agency that closing airspace to planes carrying humanitarian aid to war-torn Syria was "an unhuman and clearly short-sighted act", adding that alternative routes for the Russian planes flying to Syria had already been found, Russian news service RT.com reported.