site.btaMedia Review: March 4

MIDDLE EAST CRISIS

Former Bulgarian deputy defence minister Rumen Kanchev described the situation in the Middle East as a “regional conflict” in an interview with Bulgarian National Radio on Wednesday. “America has concentrated colossal power in the area,” Kanchev said. He quoted statements in Washington on Tuesday, according to which the operation against Iran has not yet attained its objectives of completely destroying the country’s capabilities to maintain combat operations over a long period of time and reach targets outside its territory – that is, destroying the whole military infrastructure of the Iranian armed forces. Cleric Mojtaba Khamenei, seen as possible next Supreme Leader of Iran, is the next target, Kanchev said. “Severe authoritarian regimes do not go easily,” he commented.

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Mira Mayer, an analyst and expert on the Middle East who teaches at Sofia’s New Bulgarian University, told bTV on Tuesday that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has halted dozens of oil tankers at both ends of the passage, which will inevitably affect Europe, including Bulgaria. The countries of Asia and the Pacific will be affected worst of all, she predicted. “We should let the Iranians choose their own path. It is important to keep the conflict from spreading across the region and to the wider world,” Mayer said.

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NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte visited North Macedonia at the height of the Middle East crisis, Mediapool.bg reports. Rutte said that the strikes of the United States and Israel against Iran have met with wide support in Europe, according to an AFP report, quoted on the Bulgarian news website. North Macedonia President Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova said her country contributes to NATO defence.

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Insurer DZI has extended the coverage of its “Assistance for Travelling Abroad” Insurance for clients who are in Middle East countries and have difficulty returning to Bulgaria, Dnevnik.bg reports. The website quotes the Tourism Ministry as estimating on Tuesday that 1,092 Bulgarians are in the Middle East.

POLITICS

Desislava Radeva, until recently first lady of Bulgaria, has distanced herself from the new political project of her husband Rumen Radev, who will lead it into the early parliamentary elections on April 19, Mediapool.bg says. “For the record, I am not in the scheme,” Radeva wrote on Facebook, as quoted in the story. The ex-president heads Progressive Bulgaria, a coalition of three parties.

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A visit by former president Rumen Radev to the southern city of Stara Zagora was discussed by sociologist Dobromir Zhivkov during Wednesday’s morning talk show of BNT1, the main channel of Bulgarian National Television. Zhivkov said it is not surprising that people who were around Radev in the presidency are apparently his close associates in Progressive Bulgaria. According to the analyst, the fact that Radev chose these particular mandate-holding parties to create his coalition shows an attempt to position himself in the Social-Democratic segment of the political arena. “It makes perfect sense that the main part of Radev’s electoral corps will be this big Red family which we have known since 2017,” Zhivkov said.

The GERB party, which was the main entity in the latest government coalition and has dominated Bulgarian politics, on and off, since 2009, was also discussed on the show. Political scientist Dimitar Ganev said GERB’s possible primary goal is to retain a relatively well-mobilized and loyal electorate. Voter turnout is crucial, in the sense that higher turnout will have a negative impact on GERB’s election result, Ganev said, adding that the party seems to be preparing to act as an opposition force in the next National Assembly.

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Ten Bulgarian municipalities have been approved to draw up projects with partners in Romania to develop cycling tourism and cultural tourism along the Danube River, SegaBG.com says. The projects will be funded under the Interreg Programme. Each undertaking can cost up to EUR 6 million, and the total budget is EUR 56.25 million. The projects have been designed in accordance with the Integrated Territorial Strategy for the Romania-Bulgaria Cross-Border Area, with the EuroVelo 6 route (Atlantic–Black Sea) serving as the backbone. In Bulgaria and Romania, EuroVelo 6 runs for more than 600 kilometres, and tourists can choose either the northern or the southern road, or switch between them by crossing the river.

ECONOMY

The sunflower market is discussed in an analysis by the Institute for Market Economics (IME), covered by Dnevnik.bg. It says that expectations of several shiploads of sunflower from South America arriving in Bulgaria have been discussed in the public domain for two weeks now. Bulgarian agricultural producers have complained of a potential risk stemming from different farming regulations in and outside the EU and the possibility of national and regional market prices going down. The IME argues that a price fall would be a welcome market development which would boost effectiveness and could bring benefits for consumers. International free trade in foods is the most significant factor for food security and famine prevention globally, it says. The IME notes that Bulgaria has the capacity to process 4.5 million tonnes of sunflower annually, but the local crop is obviously not enough to fill that capacity.

NATIONAL DAY

Bulgaria celebrated its National Day on March 3, marking the 148th anniversary of its liberation from Ottoman rule as a result of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878.

Novelist Tedora Dimova writes on Kultura.bg that the establishment of March 3 as the national holiday was received calmly at the time because it was a counterpoint to the communist regime’s September 9. Later, there was pressure to change March 3, which grew stronger after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Dimova says: “We cannot be sure that another change of the national holiday may not lead to a national rift. Division seems to be a part of our national destiny.”

A comment on Trud.bg says that the national holiday ought to unite people. The author, Krystian Szkwarek, writes: “The world is ablaze, and history is repeating itself staggeringly quickly. Anything is becoming possible again on the world scene, even the unthinkable. In times like this, the weak, divided, unconfident nations are always devoured by the strong or get stuck in the mud of their own inertia. A national holiday is not something holy. It is not an unchanging dogma – that is what faith is about. A national holiday is something pragmatic with a concrete function, just like a national project in its entirety, all its symbols and myths and its pantheon. Its role is to unite people. Give them a sense of togetherness and keep them as a single organized whole, so that they can be effective and flexible in the stormy and dangerous sea of history.” Szkwarek notes that now is hardly the time to find fault with the national project and its symbols. He urges readers: “Get a grip on yourselves. If there is something that annoys you about this holiday, just clench your teeth. [...] No matter how you feel, the least you can do is refrain from sowing disagreement, stop trying to deny everything. Think responsibly about the situation we are in as a small and weak nation, and for Christ’s sake, celebrate your national holiday, just ONCE a year, take it as the one thing left to us that unites us.”

CULTURE

The song with the peculiar title “Bangaranga,” which the singer Dara will perform for Bulgaria at the Eurovision Song Contest (May 12-16), has drawn much international interest since its official premiere in Bulgaria on February 28, SegaBG.com reports. In the space of two days, it became the most watched video among all songs for the contest, posted on official social media channels. “Bangaranga” hit more than 3.4 million views and 55,000 reactions on Instagram, 3 million views on TikTok and over 600,000 on YouTube. Foreign viewers’ reactions are invariably positive. The response is very different on Bulgarian social media. “Foolish,” “dumb,” “a third-world piece,” “tragedy” and “disaster” are some of the words used by Bulgarian viewers to describe it, the website says.

CRIME

A Bulgarian woman was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment in London, Trud.bg says, quoting UK media. Stanislava Kukusheva, 36, a student nurse in the UK, was found guilty of keeping a weapon used by a hitman. In the summer of 2025, Kukusheva, using the dating app Tinder, met Ali Danish Syed, a Pakistani holding a Netherlands passport. Syed killed the father of two kids in a Turkish social club in Tottenham, North London. He was hired for the job by a local criminal group.