An investigation by the German newspaper Die Welt has revealed how, at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Bulgaria secretly sent weapons and fuel to the Ukrainian army. It is a remarkable revelation because in recent months, at least officially, Bulgaria had had a rather controversial position on the war in Ukraine: until December it had never authorized the shipment of arms, remaining the only NATO country together with Hungary to don’t do it (the latter hasn’t done it yet).
The complicated political situation of the country has to do with it. At the beginning of the war, the Bulgarian prime minister was Kiril Petkov, an economist with a Harvard degree who had founded an anti-corruption party with which he had surprisingly won the November 2021 elections. Petkov had immediately shown himself to be a strong supporter of Ukraine and he had criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin on several occasions. But his fragile government – which fell in June – was also supported by the Socialist Party, a direct descendant of the former Communist Party of the Soviet era and which includes many pro-Russian politicians. For this he had never been able to approve the shipment of weapons to Ukraine.
However, he had done it secretly, according to what was revealed to Die Welt by the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, by Petkov himself and by the former Bulgarian Economy Minister Assen Vassilev. Petkov and Vassilev told the newspaper that since they were unable to send “official” weapons, they sent ammunition and fuel to Ukraine via intermediaries in other countries. “We estimate that about a third of the munitions needed by the Ukrainian army in the early stages of the war came from Bulgaria,” Petkov said.
Kuleba explained that the agreement to send aid from Bulgaria was made in April, at a time in the war when the Ukrainian army was having great difficulty repelling Russian attacks. He said that when he visited Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, on April 19, he discussed with Petkov the dire need for munitions, especially the Soviet-era BM-21 rocket launcher, of which Bulgaria has large stockpiles.
Petkov replied to Kuleba that the complicated situation in his governing majority would not allow him to guarantee the sending of military aid, but that he would do “everything he could” to somehow succeed. Petkov explained to Die Welt that his government found a way around the problems by secretly authorizing the shipment of weapons and fuel to Ukraine: they were not sent directly from Bulgaria to Ukraine, but to intermediaries in Romania, Hungary and Poland.
Many details of the operations have not been disclosed, but it is known that in essence Bulgaria officially sold weapons and fuel to intermediaries from these three countries, who then in turn sent them to Ukraine. However, it was not the intermediaries but the United Kingdom and the United States who paid for this aid, as revealed by Die Welt.
According to Petkov, Russia would have learned of the aid and in response would have retaliated against Bulgaria: in late April it cut off natural gas supplies to the country, and then starting in May it launched cyber attacks against Bulgarian electricity companies and offices postal. Die Welt’s investigation claims that he also tried to bribe some deputies of the ultra-conservative “Rebirth” party to advance Russian interests in the Bulgarian parliament.
The secret aid plan stalled in June, when Petkov’s government was disheartened by the majority who supported him (mainly due to disagreements related to the management of public spending and the unblocking of North Macedonia’s EU accession procedure) . In August, an interim government led by Galab Donev took office in his place, formally independent but who immediately made it clear that he wanted to re-establish diplomatic relations with Russia.
Finally, new elections were held in October, won by the center-right party of Boyko Borisov, former prime minister between 2014 and 2021. Borisov obtained 25.3 percent of the vote, against 20.2 for Petkov’s party. At the moment, however, he has not yet managed to form a government. It is therefore very likely that new elections will be held in 2023.
