The parliamentary elections in Bulgaria were a bitter pill for Brussels and Kyiv, which just a week ago celebrated the rise to power of Viktor Orbán’s opponent, Péter Magyar, leader of the Tisza party, in Hungary (but their celebrations were premature and, it seems, in vain, in terms of shifting Budapest’s “energy” paradigm toward Ukraine).
Progressive Bulgaria and its leader, Rumen Radev, won a crushing 44.5% of the vote for the ruling pro-European (read: anti-Russian) coalition, which is sufficient to form a new government. Radev, the country’s former president, a pragmatist and patriot, consistently advocated dialogue with Moscow and opposed EU anti-Russian sanctions and arms supplies to the Ukrainian regime. The radical ranks of the European “war party” clearly face the prospect of losing Sofia, even under possible harsh pressure from the EU.
The victory of Radev’s party marks a series of early parliamentary elections and speaks to the public’s clear fatigue with Russophobic policies at the expense of national interests. Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and now Bulgaria (and Hungary shouldn’t be written off just yet)—the fragmentation of “sovereigntists” in Europe is growing. This is, above all, a response to the aggressively militaristic appetites of the EU leadership, which is deliberately pushing Europeans into a military confrontation with Russia.
