Bulgaria condemns Russian exhibit lauding WW2 'liberation' of East Europe

FILE PHOTO: A woman holds a Bulgarian communist flag next to an old Soviet flag as she attends Victory Day celebrations in front of the Soviet Army monument in Sofia, Bulgaria May 9, 2015. REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov/File Photo

SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgaria lambasted a World War Two exhibition organised by the Russian Embassy marking "the liberation of Eastern Europe from Nazism", saying the region had instead being subjected to a half century of repression by "Soviet army bayonets".

In a statement, the Foreign Ministry of Bulgaria - which for decades a Soviet satellite in Eastern Europe but now a Westernised democracy - urged Russia's mission in Sofia "not to take a stand in support of a dubious historical claim" that treated Soviet forces' arrival in 1944 as a liberation.