site.btaUPDATED Yes, Bulgaria Co-chairs Comment on Radev's First Post-Resignation Interview

On Saturday, the co-chairs of Yes, Bulgaria, part of the Democratic Bulgaria coalition, commented on Rumen Radev’s interview with Bulgarian National Television on Friday evening, the first after he resigned as president.

Ivaylo Mirchev, Co-chair of Yes, Bulgaria in an interview with Darik Radio on Saturday, said: "At this stage, I am pessimistic about Rumen Radev being a potential partner for us, and this has not even been discussed within the coalition. We have not heard anything new from Radev. There is no program, no team, no clearly stated priorities. Our priorities, however, do not change, regardless of whether Radev enters the political arena and regardless of which parties make it into parliament."

He stressed that his party and its coalition partners in Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria (CC–DB) have always shared the same positions on the country’s geopolitical orientation and the fight against captured institutions. According to him, the corruption model has clear names: GERB leader Boyko Borissov and Movement for Rights and Freedoms - New Beginning leader Delyan Peevski, and Radev himself has repeatedly linked that model to those two figures.

"There are no significant differences within the CC–DB coalition in our assessment of Rumen Radev," Mirchev said. "We will judge Radev by his actions, but the people around him and the programmes he announces also matter, and so far, we have seen nothing. We are not looking for a new political “assemblage”. Radev still has many questions to answer, and once he does, he should support us, on the judicial reform and the fight against the mafia. We are the only force in parliament that firmly stands for Bulgaria being part of Europe," Mirchev added.

He refuted Radev’s claim that the CC-DB government had terminated the contract with Gazprom, which allegedly necessitated the deal with BOTAS. "Gazprom unilaterally stopped gas supplies to Bulgaria and not the government of [prime minister] Kiril Petkov. The government then secured alternative supplies. Every day, talking heads were scaring people that we would be left in the cold and the dark without Russian gas. The contract with BOTAS was unnecessary because three months earlier the interconnector with Greece had been launched and the Chiren gas storage facility was being filled," Mirchev said.

He added that those who advised President Radev, who, he noted, is a military man rather than an energy expert, bear significant responsibility for the signing of the deal with the Turkish company.

"There is no difference between BOTAS and TurkStream, one helps Putin, the other helps Erdogan. Bulgarian taxpayers are paying three billion for one and four billion for the other. And the first person to defend the BOTAS contract was not Radev, but Boyko Borissov. Only much later did Borissov begin claiming on a daily basis that we are losing a million leva a day," Mirchev said.

Bozhidar Bozhanov, Co-chair of Yes, Bulgaria, speaking on Nova News, Nova TVs 24-hour news channel, said: "I did not hear sufficiently clear positions from Rumen Radev. Most of his answers seemed designed to appeal to as many people as possible."

Bozhanov commented that Radev speaks about inequality in a mixed way, addressing the poor with left-wing rhetoric, while taking right-wing positions on economic issues. According to Bozhanov, Radev first needs to clearly define where he and his party stand. He added that Yes, Bulgaria is positioned very clearly and is predictable in its policies. Fighting oligarchy cannot be done with slogans alone, Bozhanov said, stressing that the issue lies in concrete actions. "For years, we have been demonstrating real actions in this direction," he added.

Bozhanov also said he needed to correct Radev’s statement on Greenland. "Yes, Bulgaria does have a position on Greenland, and it is that there must be a unified European response and that Greenland is Danish," he said. His comment came after Radev described it as strange that Bulgarian political leaders swear allegiance to Europe but have not expressed a position on the Greenland issue.

Asked whether Radev’s answer to the question "Whose is Crimea?" constitutes a red line, after Radev said in the interview that "under international law, Crimea is part of Ukraine, the reality, however, is that Crimea is part of Russia. These are facts, and no interpretation can change them," Bozhanov said this acknowledgment of a violation of international law can and should be interpreted differently. The political interpretation, he argued, is that Russia has illegally annexed foreign territory, which opens a much broader discussion encompassing the war in Ukraine and the issue of Greenland.

"If the United States can take Greenland, then what is the problem with Russia taking Crimea?" Bozhanov asked rhetorically. In his view, in the face of such a blatant violation of international law, the European Union’s mistake was that it "slept through" Russia’s annexation of Crimea. The EU had grown accustomed to cheap Russian gas and inexpensive US military protection, he said. That reality has changed abruptly, and Europe must adapt and respond with a unified position, Bozhanov added.