site.btaBulgaria’s Consulate General in Odesa Hosts Meeting with Bulgarian Community on March 3

The Bulgarian Consulate General in Odesa on Sunday hosted a meeting with members of the Bulgarian community from the regions of Odessa, Kirovohrad and Kherson on the occasion of Bulgaria's national holiday, March 3. 

A Bulgarian delegation, led by National Assembly Deputy Chair Rossitsa Kirova, included BTA Director General Kiril Valchev, the Dean of the Faculty of Geology and Geography of Sofia University Prof. Kliment Naydenov, Sofia Municipal Councillor Dragomir Mladenov, and writers Yordan Evtimov and Severina Markova. 

At the beginning, a minute of silence was observed to honour fallen Ukrainian citizens and Bessarabian Bulgarians. Sunday was declared a day of mourning in Odesa in memory of the ten people killed in a drone attack on March 2. Among the victims were a mother and child from a Bulgarian family. 

"Bulgaria supports the independence, sovereignty and integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders. Bulgaria supports Ukraine very seriously in this unjust war of aggression against Russia. It has shown it in these two years. Apart from the intensive contacts at the political level, it has also provided funding for individual programs that support organizations with Bulgarian identity in Ukraine," Bulgarian Consul General Svetoslav Ivanov told the guests gathered in the hall of Bulgaria’s Consulate General. 

National Assembly Deputy Chair Rossitsa Kirova said that Bulgaria is where there are people who keep the Bulgarian spirit and traditions. “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.   

“Today we celebrate peace and freedom, and those who gave their lives to achieve them,” BTA Director General Kiril Valchev said in his address. “It is amazing to see people here who keep the memory of their ancestors much more strongly than we do in Bulgaria. I don't know any other Bulgarian settlement that can name every single family from 1830 like the village of Zarya keeps the memory of the 46 families,” Valchev said.

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.