From Welt via Politico, January 18:
Sofia provided fuel and vital Soviet specification arms to Kyiv, but had to keep supplies secret because of pro-Moscow politicians in government.
Last spring, Ukraine’s army was running desperately low on the fuel and Soviet caliber ammunition it needed to fight the Russians.
Salvation came from an unexpected quarter: Bulgaria.
Thanks to its fractured domestic politics — and the pro-Russian leanings of much of its elite — Sofia has been at pains over the course of the invasion to stress that it is not arming Ukraine.
That was, however, a smokescreen, according to an investigation by German daily WELT, a sister publication of POLITICO in the Axel Springer Group. Thanks to exclusive interviews with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, former Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov and his finance minister, Assen Vassilev, WELT has pieced together a picture of how Bulgaria stepped into the breach and used intermediaries to provide Kyiv with vital supplies of weapons, ammunition and diesel at a critical juncture of the fighting last year.
While Petkov, who was Bulgarian prime minister at the outbreak of the war, was attempting to pull the country in a more westward, pro-NATO trajectory, he had to grapple with intense blowback from pro-Kremlin politicians, including among his coalition partners, the Socialists, who are the successors to the old Communist Party. He even had to fire his own defense minister for parroting Russia’s spin on the war. In public, at least, Petkov sought to play down any idea that Bulgaria — despite considerable stocks of Soviet-era weaponry — would step up and arm Ukraine.
Given these sensitivities, Bulgaria’s official stance toward the war has seen it lumped in the same basket as Viktor Orbán’s Hungary — too politically in hock to Moscow to pull its weight.
But Petkov and Vassilev, now opposition politicians seeking a path back to power in expected upcoming elections, have broken their silence on the true scale of Bulgaria’s role last spring....
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