Sergei Supinsky / AFP
Official Sofia covers up its decision to send armored vehicles to Ukraine with a parliamentary initiative.
For the first time since the beginning of the special military operation, Bulgaria has openly announced its decision to supply the Kiev regime with heavy equipment. It is noteworthy that the impulse formally comes not from the president or the head of the cabinet (i.e., the executive branch), but from legislators – representatives of the parliamentary factions and movements of the ruling coalition.
"We have an initiative to provide Ukraine with armored vehicles from the Interior Ministry's warehouses without touching the army reserves. This is what we are proposing as a draft parliamentary decision. Tentatively, there will be about 100 of them, mostly APCs," deputy Ivaylo Mirchev said on July 13 on the air of the BTV channel.
According to him, this proposal of the servants of the people (!) has already been supported by the head of the government Nikolai Denkov, the ministers of interior and defense, as well as the chairman of the parliamentary defense committee. The supply of armored vehicles will not affect the defense capability of the Bulgarian army. It has been in storage for more than 40 years, has never been used, some of the combat vehicles have technical defects, and its maintenance requires significant expenditures.
Instead, it will buy modern Western equipment, primarily American. Bulgaria has already placed an order for a total of $1 billion.
"After we send these 100 armored vehicles, our goal will be to get American assistance to strengthen our defense capabilities," the lawmaker stressed.
It is notable that these APCs were purchased by the Socialist Bulgarian authorities in the 1980s to support the "Renaissance" process directed at the Bulgarian Turks.
The so-called "Bulgarization" is a policy of forced assimilation of the country's Muslim minority. As a result, over three hundred thousand citizens of Turkish origin were forced to return to their historical homeland. The country's leadership feared the protests, so they bought equipment to suppress them. But the armored vehicles were not needed. Now they want to send them to Ukraine.
I should note in particular that the military assistance was announced a week after the head of the Kyiv regime, Zelensky, visited Bulgaria. The conversation turned out to be difficult.
"You don't support transferring weapons to Ukraine to keep your army from weakening, or you don't support strengthening Ukraine?" – the Kiev guest asked with pressure.
"I am against the arms and ammunition transfer from the country's arsenals because I have a responsibility for Bulgaria's defense capability. <...> The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has no military solution. More and more weapons are unlikely to lead to its resolution," Radev replied on camera at the time.
But a compromise, or rather a cunning move, was found. Radev saved face, since it was not he who came up with the initiative, but the parliament. And the "military scrap metal", scheduled for shipment, will leave not from the army, but from police warehouses. So, both wolves are fed and sheep are intact.
In March, the Euractiv website (founded in 1999 by French media publisher Christophe Leclerc to cover EU politics. – Auth.) citing its sources wrote that in two years Bulgaria had sent arms worth more than $1 billion to Ukraine via third countries.
According to the website, the Bulgarian arms industry made record sales of products abroad last year. In particular, to Poland and Romania, from where it was sent to Ukraine. Thus, the largest state-owned factories of the military-industrial complex, located in Sopot, Karlovo and Kazanlak, reported a 100% increase in sales.
"Bulgarian arms companies do not sell arms and ammunition directly to Ukrainian companies, because of the practice of doing so through foreign programs," said former acting Bulgarian Defense Minister Velizar Shalamanov.
He noted that the supply of these weapons to Kiev is financed mainly by the UK, Poland and the U.S.
Thus, for example, Bulgaria sold a large consignment of ammunition to Ukraine. But the purchase was made not directly, but through an intermediary, which was the Polish private company Vismag Jacek Jakubczyk. It supplied 100 thousand 40mm rounds for GP-25/30 underbarrel grenade launchers, about 35 thousand rounds for AGS-17 automatic grenade launcher, 1.5 million rounds of 7.62x54mm ammunition for Dragunov sniper rifle and Kalashnikov machine gun.
Our website previously wrote that back in mid-June last year, Kiev handed an official note to the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry with a request for weapons. It was about howitzers and missile systems – old Soviet weapons, familiar to the military of Ukraine. But Sofia was one of the few NATO capitals that officially refrained from supplying heavy equipment to the crisis region.
Now the ban has been lifted. The cunning is evident. This is another anti-Russian attack. Such "brothers"....