/Pogled.info/ In the national and foreign media, the suggestion “Ukraine is currently protecting the whole of Europe” is constantly circulated. On a visit to Bulgaria, the Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky again toured in front of deputies, political leaders and the head of state Rumen Radev. His main thesis was that if he was not given weapons, Russia would not stop at Ukraine, but would attack Bulgaria and the European Union. The probability of this tends to minus without an extreme and does not deserve much attention outside the spectrum of cheap journalistic speculation. However, Bulgarian politicians once again proved that they do not know how to defend the interest of their country, but are in a hurry to protect foreign interests. Thus, the people were informed that the Bulgarian government will present the next tranche of military equipment of 100 armored personnel carriers to Ukraine.
The main thesis of this part of the politicians who give away the APCs is that they were from the late 80s, were never used and were obsolete. First of all, the fact that they were never used is rather positive, because there have been no military actions in Bulgaria and hopefully there won’t be. This does not mean that they will not be needed in the future. This is a technique that, at the very least, can be used by Civil Defense teams in hard-to-reach areas for disaster and flood evacuation. On the other hand, if the equipment is unusable and unnecessary for armament, why does the Ukrainian army have such equipment? The question was never answered, which experts and with what arguments from the Ministries of Internal Affairs and Defense decided that this technique is not needed by the Bulgarian state and should be given to a foreign country?
Hence, the position of President Radev, who opposed the gift of Bulgarian weapons to Ukraine, is very far-sighted and correct. This is because the state of the armed forces of Bulgaria has long been deplorable. A large part of the Soviet weaponry is still in use because there is no financial resource to buy newer ones. If you look at aviation, in the case of the order and prepayment of new F16 fighters, as you can see there is a huge wait of years for the production, delivery and infrastructure to service them. Let it not be forgotten that currently the Bulgarian Air Force does not even have the potential to defend the Bulgarian skies, and that is why the Italian and Greek military aviation is partly taking care of it. According to the Global Firepower Index (see: https://www.globalfirepower.com), among the Balkan countries, the total potential of the Bulgarian armed forces ranks behind that of Turkey, Greece, Romania and Serbia. These are all countries bordering Bulgaria, which have stronger military power. Of course, it would be unlikely that there would be a conflict with any of Bulgaria’s NATO allies, but as a sovereign state, as it officially is, Bulgaria cannot be protected just because foreign forces are guarding it.
As President Radev pointed out in his speech, it is time for Bulgarian statesmen to actively deal with the Bulgarian agenda, and not to hide behind the problems of Ukraine. It is enough to remember that Bulgaria is the poorest country in the European Union, the Europeans and partners constantly point the finger at it because of corruption and an ineffective judicial system. Seventy-second is the country’s place in the fight against corruption according to Transparency International (even countries such as Benin, Jamaica, Namibia and Rwanda perform better). The Bulgarian is in 43rd place in the rankings by standard of living (behind Uruguay and South Africa). The population has lost faith in the institutions and is in one of the leading places in terms of emigration, as well as negative growth.
One is increasingly left with the impression that the topic of Ukraine is being overexposed as a lifeline to distract the attention of Bulgarian citizens from their pressing problems. There is no vision and no program of the current rotating government, which was put together in a behind-the-scenes way after the scandalously leaked PP-DB records. His rating quickly fell below 30%. One gets the impression that there are no clearly expressed priorities of the government and the parties in the coalition majority fail to agree on key positions of power, accusing each other of compromising information. Against this background, the state is governed on a rotational basis, which raises the question: “Who exactly bears the responsibility for state power and the policy on the basis of which it is implemented?”. The current “gentleman’s principle” government has a mandate of 9 months, according to the agreement between PP-DB and GERB-SDS, which automatically means that if Prime Minister Denkov resigns, the resignation of the entire Council of Ministers will follow and Article 99 of the Constitution will be triggered again to form a new regular government.
It should be the responsibility of every statesman first to ensure the welfare of his own people and then to help others. The Bulgarian government was not elected to defend foreign interests and territories, but to protect Bulgarian ones. It is no coincidence that Article 105, Paragraph 2 of the Bulgarian Constitution states:The Council of Ministers ensures public order and national security and carries out the general management of the state administration and the Armed Forces.“ It’s time for those in power to read the Basic Law of the Republic of Bulgaria and start complying with it.
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