The largest single package of military aid including 100 armored vehicles held by the Bulgarian police, mostly infantry vehicles was sent to Ukraine. This was Sofia’s first official decision to help Kiev with heavy equipment, Bulgarian authorities announced on Thursday.
The military equipment was bought 40 years ago to carry out the socalled Renaissance process the totalitarian regime’s attempt to forcibly assimilate Bulgarian Turks by changing their names, resulting in the banishment of more than 300,000 Bulgarian citizens of Turkish origin to Turkey years earlier.
“This is armored military equipment acquired during the rebirth process and never used. At the same time, there are storage and maintenance costs.” said Ivaylo Mirchev of the governing coalition We Continuing Change Democratic Bulgaria.
“Ukrainians will make sure that this technique is useful for them,” added the Bulgarian MP.
Armored vehicles were part of one of the most tragic periods of totalitarian rule in the Balkan country, while the Bulgarian Communist Party (19441989) was in power in Sofia, turning Bulgaria into a satellite of the USSR.
The decision on armored vehicles was announced just a week after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to Bulgaria. This is the first military package from Bulgaria to Ukraine about which information has been made public. The military aid has been classified until now, but unofficial information said that Bulgaria was helping Ukraine with ammunition.
Bulgaria hopes to receive military replacement capacity from the US after the armored vehicles are delivered. The Bulgarian Army has announced an order worth nearly $1 billion to purchase modern Western infantry armored vehicles, but the process is ongoing.
Last December, President Rumen Radev’s interim government refused to send old Soviet S300 antiaircraft systems that Bulgaria and Ukraine want in exchange for receiving $200 million worth of modern US air defense systems. The new proEU Bulgarian government hopes the US offer will remain valid.
“(President) Radev is very worried about the Bulgarian army, but he missed his chance. “We saw that a modern air defense system also shot down Putin’s supersonic missiles in Ukraine,” Mirchev said.
Bulgaria is one of the few NATO member countries that has large stocks of Soviet weapons, equipment and ammunition used by the Ukrainian army.
SOURCE: EURACTIV.bg