Bulgaria Mulls Sending Old APCs to Ukraine Following Zelensky’s Visit

A Bulgarian Government Press Office photo shows Bulgaria's Prime Minister Nikolai Denkov (R) welcoming Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky in Sofia, 6 July 2023. Photo: EPA-EFE/BULGARIAN GOVERNMENT PRESS OFFICE / HANDOUT

"Today we'll file [in parliament] a draft on further military aid to Ukraine. It will consist of more than 100 armoured vehicles, predominantly APCs", Ivaylo Mirchev, MP and co-leader of the reformist party Democratic Bulgaria, said on Thursday.

His party is part of the uneasy ruling coalition between the opposing forces of "We Continue the Change" and Democratic Bulgaria on one side and GERB and United Democratic Forces on the other. 

The vehicles were manufactured in the 1950s and the 1960s and were acquired but never used by the Bulgarian army in the 1980s. 

This will be a third package of military aid from Bulgaria to Ukraine. After months of heated discussion between pro-EU and pro-Kremlin parties, parliament finally voted in November last year to send Ukraine weapons.

Mirchev added that, apart from the military aid, over the last 16 months Ukraine had bought a 2.5 billion euros' worth of weapons from Bulgaria. 

The draft bill, which is expected to be put to vote soon, comes a week after President Zelensky made a last-minute first official visit to Sofia. 

By the time his seven-hour visit ended, parliament had voted to sell Ukraine the Soviet-era equipment of the power plant in Belene. 

Zelensky's short stay in Sofia last Thursday boosted the Euro-Atlantic profile of the Bulgarian cabinet. But his meeting with President Rumen Radev and new PM Nickolay Denkov saw a heated exchange between the two presidents. Radev, known for pro-Kremlin sympathies, used a neutral term for the war in Ukraine...