Page 70 - bne_May magazine 2023_20230503 BRICS

70 Opinion
bne May 2023
The anonymous volunteers
The war in Ukraine increased the sensitivity of Bulgarians towards those in need and that has also extended to causes at home. In the autumn of 2022, floods destroyed or badly damaged houses and public buildings in several villages
in their own country. Thousands of people donated funds, clothes and equipment within hours, while hundreds went to help local people by cleaning the areas and restoring buildings.
Another event, in November last year, also provoked a massive response – an autistic child disappeared in the town of Pernik. After his father alerted the police, hundreds of volunteers went to search for the boy for days, organising themselves without the help of the state authorities. The child was found alive and healthy thanks to their efforts.
But while the number of people responding to devastating events in Bulgaria and abroad has grown, so have their opponents. The voices of those criticising the Bulgarians who help the people of Ukraine, Turkey and Syria, especially on social media, have become louder.
A typical accusation is that Bulgarians who help foreigners do not care about poor retired people at home. The pro-Russian political parties participate in this rhetoric, and it has been claimed that such accusations are often started by trolls paid by Russia.
President’s U-turn towards the Kremlin
A political debate over whether and to what extent Bulgaria should support Ukraine with military and other forms of aid has been raging since the war started.
Pre-war, President Rumen Radev was recognised as a political figure fighting against corruption, which helped him to
win his second mandate. However, he alienated many of
Bulgarian President Rumen Radev was hailed for his efforts against corruption, but alienated supporters when he took increasingly pro-Russian positions.
his admirers when he started taking increasingly open pro-Russian positions since February 2022.
Radev’s main position is that Bulgaria should only provide humanitarian aid to Ukraine, preferably to Bulgarians living in Ukraine, and under no circumstances give weapons to Kyiv. The president claims that providing weapons to Ukraine will only escalate the war and will not bring peace. He went even further, accusing Change Continues and Democratic Bulgaria, who have repeatedly pushed for military aid to Ukraine, of being “the parties of war”.
It was revealed in January that former prime minister Kiril Petkov’s government secretly supplied Ukraine with fuel and Soviet calibre ammunition after the start of Russian invasion via third countries.
Radev also pushed Prime Minister Gulub Donev caretaker government to try hard to launch talks with Gazprom on
the resumption of deliveries of natural gas. Gazprom halted supplies to Bulgaria in April 2022, after Petkov’s government refused to start paying in rubles. Radev accused Petkov and few of his ministers of violating the contract with Gazprom, which, he said, could lead to heavy fines for Bulgaria.
Recently, Radev also said that as long as the country is ruled by the caretaker government, Sofia will not provide any weapons or ammunition to Kyiv even though the last parliament ordered the interim government to do that. The president said that Bulgaria would seek guarantees from its EU partners that they would not provide any weapons purchased from Bulgarian arms producers to Ukraine.
Anti-euro referendum
Another pro-Russian politician, Vazrazhdane leader Kostadin Kostadinov – dubbed Kostya Kopeyking because of his pro-Russian aspirations – has started a petition for a referendum on delaying euro adoption until 2043.
Kostadinov and his party argue that should Bulgaria adopt the euro, people will rapidly become poor and will starve. Vazrazhdane claims that Bulgaria would entirely lose its monetary sovereignty, and that the decisions of the European Central Bank would harm Bulgaria’s interests.
Undermining Kostadinov’s arguments, it has been revealed that he and most of Vazrazhdane’s leadership keep their savings in euro accounts. The party showed the same duplicity regarding anti-coronavirus vaccines – while calling for protests against vaccines, it turned out that all of its MPs were vaccinated.
The fight against “gender ideology”
Another issue that has preoccupied those on the illiberal side of the divide is “gender ideology” – a term created by Russia and quickly adopted in Bulgaria several years ago when far-right parties fiercely opposed the adoption of the Istanbul
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