site.btaDeputy Parliament Speaker Meets Bulgarian Community in Odesa on National Holiday

Bulgaria is where there are people who carry the Bulgarian spirit and traditions, Deputy National Assembly Chair Rositsa Kirova said in Odesa at a meeting with representatives of the Bulgarian community in Odesa region on Sunday, Bulgaria s national holiday. 

“There are people here who love their homeland without even having seen it, speak Bulgarian and keep the Bulgarian traditions and Bulgarian spirit, Kirova said. You are citizens of Ukraine and as such you should feel the support that Bulgaria gives to Ukraine in this unjust war,” she added. 

Seven minutes before the start of the meeting with the Bulgarian community, Odesa city authorities announced a missile alert. All guests remained in the hall and the meeting proceeded normally. 

She recounted her meeting with the Bulgarian community in the village of Zarya (former Kamchik) on Saturday.  

“I can only express my admiration for the Bulgarians in Ukraine, who are Ukrainian citizens, and everything they do for Bulgaria. Perhaps our country is indebted to all Bulgarians abroad, which together we can fix.” 

"In this war the spirit must prevail, the just cause that tells us that we must not kill, that we must respect everyone's right to self-determination, which tells us that we cannot allow such aggression, to lose human lives every day,” Kirova said. 

The meeting at Bulgaria’s Consulate General in Odesa was attended by representatives of the local government and the public of Bulgarian origin.  

The meeting was also attended by the Bulgarian Consul General in Odesa Svetoslav Ivanov, Bulgarian News Agency Director General Kiril Valchev, Sofia Municipal Councillor Dragomir Mladenov, the Dean of the Faculty of Geology and Geography of Sofia University, and Bulgarian writers Yordan Evtimov and Severina Markova. 

The Bulgarian community in the Odesa region is the third largest and numbers over 150, 000 people according to the official census in Ukraine in 2001. About 50-60,000 Bulgarians live in Odesa. The largest compact Bulgarian population is concentrated in the Bolhrad, Izmail and Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi regions.