Ukraine Bulgarias secret help How Sofia saved Kyiv hidden from

Ukraine, Bulgaria’s secret help: How Sofia saved Kyiv (hidden from Russia)

Although the Bulgaria and Hungary are the only NATO and EU countries that have officially refused to send military aid to the USUkraineSofia has developed into one of the most important arms suppliers of the country devastated by the Russian occupation. According to expert estimates, since the war began last October, Bulgaria has supplied arms and ammunition worth at least one billion euros to Ukraine through intermediaries.

internal disputes

Sofia’s intervention was particularly crucial last spring, when the Kiev army ran out of fuel and ammunition: it sent supplies and saved Ukraine, but kept the operation secret so as not to irritate the pro-Moscow political front. In fact, Bulgaria is characterized by great political instability. The Bulgarian President Romanian Radevyesterday gave the Socialist Party (BSP) a new mandate to form a government after two failed attempts. This is the third and final attempt following snap elections on October 2, a mandate that, under the constitution, the head of state gives to a political force of his or her choice.

Both the conservative Gerb party, which won the election, and the liberal Let’s Continue the Change (Pp) party, the country’s second-strongest political force, have failed in recent months in attempts to form a government. If the third attempt also fails, there will be early elections. In the current parliament, there are three forces opposed to arms sales to Ukraine: the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), the openly pro-Russian Vazrazhdane Party and, to a lesser extent, former interim Prime Minister Stefan Yanev’s Bulgarian Rising Party. The latter recently agreed to send old Soviet weapons on condition that the country would receive modern NATO weapons in return. For politicians, however, the issue is particularly sensitive: polls show that almost 30% of Bulgarians directly support Russia in the conflict and half have strong pro-Russian sentiments. In addition, about 70% of the population believe that sending arms represents Bulgaria’s direct entry into the conflict.

With NATO and the EU

It is therefore natural that during the invasion Sofia was careful to stress that she was not arming Ukraine. But research by the German daily Welt shows that it is a smoke screen: with exclusive interviews with the Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kulebato the former Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov and to his Minister of Finance Assen Vasilev, Welt reiterated the plan by which Bulgaria violated him and, last year, at a critical moment in the fighting, sent vital supplies of arms, ammunition and fuel to Kyiv with the help of intermediaries. The role of Kiril Petkov, the Bulgarian prime minister at the outbreak of the war, with his anti-corruption party, was fundamental. Petkov has taken an unusual and outspoken position in favor of the EU and NATO since Russia invaded Ukraine: Bulgaria has always been a country traditionally friendly to Russia, but the former prime minister fired its defense minister for refusing to to describe invasion as “war”. Flattening the Kremlin’s version of a “military special operation”.

Publicly, however, he has consistently refuted all speculation that Bulgaria, despite its sizable stockpile of Soviet-era weapons, would step forward and arm Ukraine. Because of this, Sofia has always been associated with Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, which was too politically committed to Moscow to support Kyiv. But Petkov and Vasilyev, now opposition politicians seeking a way back to power in the upcoming elections, broke their silence last spring on the true extent of Bulgaria’s role. Deliveries to Ukraine, they told the world, were sent through intermediaries in Bulgaria and abroad, which opened air and land routes through Romania, Hungary and Poland. “We estimate that about a third of the ammunition needed by the Ukrainian army in the first phase of the war came from Bulgaria,” Petkov told Die Welt.

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