site.btaMedia Review: August 14

Monday’s new media features various topics, the most notable of which is the situation in the Black Sea area.

POLITICS

Trud has an interview with international security expert Boyan Chukov, who expresses his view that the war of attrition between Russia, Ukraine and the allies of the latter might transfer in the Black Sea area, which would draw Bulgaria closer to the conflict. Among the topics he discusses are the Niger coup, which he considers a sign of French post-colonialist decay in West Africa, the upcoming meeting of the BRICS leaders in South Africa and the situation around the foreign policy of Bulgaria. In Chukov’s words, Bulgarian politicians “have definitively drawn us into the US/NATO war against Russia”. He says that the situation in the Black Sea has escalated dramatically and will continue to escalate. “The new US Black Sea strategy instrumentalizes Bulgaria ruthlessly not only in the US geostrategy against Russia and Belarus, but also against China”, Chukov stresses, rendering Western approach towards Russia as “bad”, since “nuclear state is to be reckoned with”. The international security expert criticizes the Bulgarian government for its militaristic position regarding Ukraine.

Regarding the situation in the Black Sea, Trud gives the position of Admiral Emil Eftimov, who says that due to the Russian Federation’s exercises where they declared a temporary unsafe zone for shipping until August 19, affecting parts of Bulgaria's exclusive economic zone, the situation is not normal, but “everything is under control and should not affect the economic activity and security of the Bulgarian citizens”. Eftimov added that the Bulgarian Defence forces monitor, analyze and react at political, state and military level.

The morning talk show of NOVA TV featured Velizar Shalamanov, former Defence Minister and security expert, who spoke on the situation in the Black Sea. "It is very important that we achieve this full situational awareness and with our means of surveillance, if we have to from space or from the air”, Shalamanov stressed, adding that tensions in the area has been growing at least since 2014. “In order to prevent any provocative incident that could lead to a really serious crisis, we need to have full information," he said.

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Sega reports that breakaways from different political forces and local leaders are forming new parties for the local elections in October. The article states that four new political parties were registered in July. Sega highlights several major and ambitious new figures on the Bulgarian political landscape, the most notable of them being Boris Bonev of the Save Sofia movement, followed by Georgi Popov, a breakaway from There Is Such a People (TISP), whose party is called Bulgarian Voice. Another breakaway, from Vassil Bozhkov’s Bulgarian Summer party, is Enyo Abrashev, who, according to the article, has expressed his intention of becoming Mayor of Stara Zagora.

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Duma and the Bulgarian National Radio (BNR) both write on the ongoing discussions around the Monument of the Soviet Army in the Knyazheska park in Sofia. Duma features the opinion of Georgi Karaslavov that the Monument should not be moved anywhere because of several international conventions that regulate the preservation of the monuments commemorating the events of the Second World War.

BNR quotes a letter of a group of citizens and public figures to Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov urging him to remove the Soviet Army Monument in Sofia. They render it a symbol of the “aggressor threatening to destroy both Ukraine's sovereignty and our civilizational gains”.

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ECONOMY

24 Chassa reports that 80% of young Bulgarians grow and live in an overpopulated and narrow household. According to the article, the situation improves after one reaches the age of 29, because the percentage of people sharing a room with somebody else falls from 60% to 36%.

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24 Chassa has a special article dedicated to Nessebar Municipality and an interview with its Mayor Nikolay Dimitrov. He says that his team is already formulating a plan for the development of Nessebar by 2037 and that the Municipality has set itself “ambitious but achievable goals, which is a guarantee for success”. According to the Mayor, what attracts investments in Nessebar is the authenticity of its Old town.

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Dnevnik has an interview with Mihail Bachvarov, expert on waste management projects and expert at the Bulgarian branch of the global consulting audit company Deloitte. He states that a development of new policy on waste management is underway. “In Sofia, as in the whole country, the garbage fee is to be formed on the principle "Pay as you throw away", not as it is now - based on the tax assessment of the dwelling”, Bachvarov says, adding that this change will require a lot of effort to implement because it will need a methodology to calculate the amount of garbage disposed of by a household. He foresees the introduction of an have individual access of every resident via chip or card so they can be accounted for. Bachvarov states that the change in payment should be introduced in 2025.

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Duma writes that 9.4% of young Bulgarians (aged 24 or less) remain unemployed. According to the article, the main factors behind this phenomenon are three – lack of experience, lack of notion on salaries and lack of work habits.

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On the morning talk show on NOVA TV economists Adrian Nikolov and Kuzman Iliev discuss whether the product prices will fall and incomes rise. Kuzman Iliev expressed his belief that a slowdown in price growth in stores should be expected. “We will be able to buy less and less despite this, because our incomes will grow at an ever-slower rate, and may even stagnate”, he added however, stressing that the symptoms of severe stagnation, almost a recession are already visible. Adrian Nikolov of the Institute for Market Economics pointed out that people will have to get used to living with higher inflation than in previous years. "The conflict in Ukraine has led to a rise in grain prices”, he said, adding that the latest data show that workers' incomes are managing to outpace inflation. Nikolov said that an energy shrinkage is imminent because of the 2022 high prices. “This will affect export prices but also those of producers,” he stressed.

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FOREIGN AFFAIRS

On bTV’s morning talk show MEP Ilhan Kyuchyuk talked about the ban on Bulgarian books that the Serbian authorities have imposed on the border with the Western Outlands in Serbia – an area densely populated by Bulgarians. On August 9, GLAS Association chairman Alexander Dimitrov was stopped from entering Serbia from Bulgaria at the Ribarci border checkpoint on the grounds that he was carrying three books in Bulgarian. He said Serbian border and customs authorities had held him at the checkpoint for four hours for carrying three copies of "The Fate of Bulgarians in the Western Outlands" by the former consul in Nis, Edvin Sugarev. The MEP stressed that he had already formally submitted a question to the European Commission, asking whether the Commission is aware of this case, and whether it is aware of the possible existence of 'blacklists' for banned books.

MISCELLANEOUS

Trud features an interview with Prof. Mihail Konstantinov, who expresses his concern on the ongoing discussion on education digitalization, which in his words would be detrimental to students’ development.

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Telegraph has an interview with Tourism Minister Zaritsa Dinkova, who states that 70,000 Bulgarians visit the seaside every weekend. She adds that the difference in quality in different parts of the Bulgarian coast is significant and that tourists’ feedback should be accounted for.