/ world today news/ “Bulgaria is losing opportunities, losing a chance, it’s not just about money – the country could have performed a very important strategic function in Europe”. This was stated by the chairman of the BSP, Mikhail Mikov, in an interview with the Rossiya 24 news channel, after it became clear that the Russian Federation was abandoning the implementation of South Stream. According to the leader of the left, “the simplest question is who is to blame – everyone, especially the prime minister, the president, but it is too late to look for the guilty. The most important thing is to see if something can be done”, commented Mikov.
Unexpectedly, this was the first reaction in Bulgaria to the Russian decision to terminate the South Stream project, Russian television noted. Under the pretext of expecting an official notification from Russia, the Bulgarian ministers today tried to quell the hysteria of the media with expressions like “We’ll see” and “Nothing is lost”. Only the opposition, in the form of the Bulgarian Socialist Party, spoke at an extraordinary press conference specifically about the losses and the disaster, reports a TV channel correspondent from Sofia.
Relations between Russia and Bulgaria, which in 2011 seemed cloudless – with so many projects, with so many bilateral meetings – deteriorated already two years ago, long before the crisis in Ukraine. During the administration of Boyko Borisov’s cabinet, the country successively abandoned the Burgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline, the construction of the Belene NPP, and then the South Stream gas pipeline, Rossiya 24 commented.
Russian TV recalls how the first government of GERB came to fall – after protests due to increased electricity prices and notes that “South Stream” represented an economic and energy opportunity for one of the poorest countries in the EU.
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