OTTAWA — Postmedia journalist David Pugliese says allegations by a former Conservative cabinet minister that he was recruited by the Soviet Union’s intelligence agency in the 1980s as part of a global subversion campaign are “ridiculous” and “entirely false.”

Chris Alexander, a former politician and diplomat, made the accusations during a House of Commons standing committee on public safety and national security on Thursday evening, saying they were based on documents that “originate in the pre-1991 archives of the Ukrainian KGB.”