Ricin the attack on Georgi Markov another Bulgarian defector, Vladimir Kostov, survived a similar attack. Kostov was standing on an escalator of the Paris metro when he felt a sting in his lower back above the belt of his trousers. He developed a fever, but recovered. After Markov's death the wound on Kostov's back was examined and a ricin-laced pellet identical to the one used against Markov was removed. Several terrorists and terrorist groups have experimented with ricin and caused several incidents of the poisons being mailed to U.S. politicians. For example, on May 29, 2013 two anonymous letters sent to
People's Republic of Bulgaria his leg with the tip of an umbrella. Markov died shortly afterwards of ricin poisoning. He was the victim of the Bulgarian secret service, as confirmed by KGB documents revealing that they had jointly planned the operation with Bulgaria. The Bulgarian People's Army sided with the Soviet Union and the Afghan communists during the Soviet–Afghan War in Afghanistan fighting the jihadist guerrillas from 1982 until its withdrawal in 1989. By the 1980s, the conservatives controlled the government. Some social and cultural liberalization and progress was led by Lyudmila Zhivkova, Todor's daughter, who became a source of strong disapproval and annoyance