The acting Bulgarian PM is on a mission to give whatever he can to Vladimir Zelensky before he’s booted from office
By RT newsroom, a team of multi-lingual journalists with over a decade of experience in Russian and international reporting, delivering original research and insights often missing from mainstream coverage
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Bulgarian
Prime Minister Andrey Gyurov’s days are numbered, and his caretaker
government is rushing to tie his country to Ukraine before a potential
populist uprising. It’s about gas, influence, and keeping Sofia marching
in lockstep with Brussels.
Gyurov was appointed acting prime
minister in February, after Rosen Zhelyazkov resigned in November under
the pressure of street protests and persistent allegations of
corruption. His mandate is non-existent, and his term in office has
lasted fewer than eight weeks. Nevertheless, he’s making frantic deals
with Kiev before an election that he and his allies are almost certain
to lose – all in an attempt to block his opponent from enacting policies
that will upset Brussels.
His ‘We Continue the Change’ coalition is floundering at a dismal 10%
ahead of Sunday’s election. The real competition is between Boyko
Borissov (who served as prime minister between 2009 and 2021) and his
pro-EU GERB-SDS coalition, and former President Rumen Radev’s
left-leaning Progressive Bulgaria coalition.
Borissov is unlikely
to upset the apple cart, but Radev is a vocal opponent of the EU’s
Ukraine project, and he’s dominating in the polls. With the clock
ticking, Gyurov set out for Kiev last month.
Why Gyurov tied Bulgaria to Ukraine
At
a ceremony in the Ukrainian capital on March 30, Gyurov and Ukrainian
leader Vladimir Zelensky signed a ten-year military cooperation
agreement. Under its terms, Bulgaria will provide bilateral military aid
to Ukraine for the next decade, both countries will jointly produce
drones and ammunition, and their armed forces will train together.
Furthermore, Sofia and Kiev will align their sanctions policies, while
Bulgaria will pay towards Ukraine’s reconstruction and support its bid
for NATO and EU membership.
Securing this agreement before the
election was crucial for Gyurov. Radev opposes both the deal and
Ukraine’s accession to NATO, while even the GERB party under Borissov
withdrew its support for the pact in 2024 – with Borissov stating that
his party would wait for a peace deal between Moscow and Kiev before
signing anything.
Gyurov faced fierce criticism at home for
signing such a consequential document without winning an election first:
Radev was among the most scathing critics, calling the caretaker prime
minister “practically illegitimate.”
Speaking to Politico this week, Gyurov insisted that Bulgaria “cannot wait for the ‘right moment’ when it comes to security.”
Bulgaria has been run by multiple caretaker governments since 2021,
none of which went through with the deal. In reality, Gyurov seized the “right moment” to ram the agreement through before it could be delayed by Borissov or outright blocked by Radev.
Of
the two candidates, Radev is the more pressing threat to Ukraine and
its backers in Sofia and Brussels. Wile Borissov sought to delay the
security agreement, GERB still supports military aid to Kiev. Radev, as
president, vetoed an agreement to provide Ukraine with armored vehicles
in 2022, blamed Ukraine for starting the conflict with Russia, and told
Zelensky to his face in 2023 that there was “no military solution” to the conflict, and that “more and more weapons will not solve it.”
Campaigning
against the well-documented corruption of Borissov and his circle,
Radev’s coalition is leading GERB in the polls by nine points. Gyurov
has leaned on Ukraine to close that gap.
Leveraging Ukraine
Gyurov
and acting Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nadezhda Neynski toured Ukraine
at the beginning of the month, with Neynski agreeing to an “active exchange of experience and good practices”
with Ukraine’s cybersecurity agency, the State Special Communications
Service. Neynski also met with anti-Kremlin activist Peter Pomerantsev
to discuss “initiatives to counter propaganda and hybrid threats.”
The same week, Neynski set up a temporary unit within the Foreign Ministry to “counter disinformation and combat hybrid threats,” which will be “advised”
by former Bellingcat investigator Christo Grozev. Wanted in Russia over
his role in encouraging Russian fighter pilots to defect to Ukraine and
accused of working with Britain’s MI6 spy agency, Grozev will “assist the organization with specific information exposing malicious influences,” which will then be dealt with “through mechanisms developed by the European Commission.”
Gyurov has already requested that the European Commission intervene
in the election by activating the same censorship tools it deployed in
France, Germany, Hungary, Moldova, and Romania to stifle support for
Euroskeptic populists. The commission has agreed to the request, and the
EU’s infamous ‘Rapid Response System’ – which forces social media
platforms to remove content flagged by Brussels’ “fact checkers” – is now active in Bulgaria.
What’s the bigger picture here?
Some
more clues as to why Gyurov would expend so much political capital on
Ukraine and against Radev can be found where politics and energy
intersect.
A section of the agreement signed by Gyurov and Zelensky last month states that Bulgaria and Ukraine will “continue to work actively to ensure alternative gas supplies to Ukraine. They recognize that the Vertical Corridor is a strategic route for the transport of additional natural gas from alternative sources to the region, including liquefied natural gas through existing and future liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals.”
Currently under
construction, the Vertical Gas Corridor will transport an estimated 10
billion cubic meters of American LNG per year from terminals in Greece
to Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, and Ukraine. The US and EU have
backed the project, with Brussels pumping more than €240 million into a
Greece-Bulgaria section of the line in 2019, and US Secretary of State
Marco Rubio calling Gyurov last week to thank the caretaker prime
minister for “supporting the Vertical Gas Corridor, which presents opportunities for US LNG exports.”
![Image Text](https://mf.b37mrtl.ru/files/2026.04/original/69df98a285f54046874e8f28.jpg" data-sizes="auto" data-src="https://mf.b37mrtl.ru/files/2026.04/original/69df98a285f54046874e8f28.jpg)
A map of the Vertical Gas Corridor project, showing anticipated flows in billions of cubic meters (BCM) per year © Gas Transmission System Operator of Ukraine
Russian gas still
flows through Bulgaria to Hungary, Serbia, and North Macedonia from the
TurkStream and Trans-Balkan pipelines. Sofia plans to stop this transit
by 2028, in line with EU policy. Once Russian gas is no longer flowing,
the Bulgarian section of the Trans-Balkan pipeline will be switched to
reverse flow and integrated into the Vertical Gas Corridor network.
Ukrainian Energy Minister Denis Shmigal noted that the project will “significantly expand [Ukraine’s] access to diversified sources of natural gas,”
and will help Kiev fill up its underground gas storage system. The US
Energy Association describes Ukraine’s storage infrastructure as “the largest and most strategically positioned system in Europe.”
Radev
supported the Vertical Gas Corridor project as president, but with the
interests of the US, EU, and Ukraine on the line, Gyurov likely isn’t
leaving anything to chance. After all, Radev backed the corridor as an
alternative to – not a replacement for – Russian gas imports. Bulgaria,
he has argued, should not be “bound by ideology” when it comes
to choosing energy partners. Additionally, despite Bulgaria planning to
halt Russian gas transit through its territory by 2028, Russian energy
giant Gazprom has already paid for transit rights until 2039. Radev’s
opponents likely fear that he will honor this contract, especially after
he vetoed a law in November that would have allowed the government to
seize a refinery operated by Russia’s Lukoil.
The bottom line
The
Vertical Gas Corridor is just one factor in an election that
Washington, Brussels, and Kiev view as critically important. The
possibility that Radev could obstruct military aid to Ukraine has
already forced Gyurov to visit Kiev to sign a decade-long security pact,
while the prospect of recently-defeated Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor
Orban being replaced by another obstructionist in Sofia has prompted
the EU to throttle political speech ahead of the election.
With so much at stake, Radev has accused Gyurov and the EU of conspiring to “discredit the elections” with claims of Russian interference, “in order to extend the power of the caretaker government of Gyurov.” Should he win, he has suggested that Guyrov and the EU may follow “the Romanian model”
– a reference to Romania’s Brussels-backed government annulling the
2024 election over false claims that Russia ran a social media influence
campaign on behalf of populist candidate Calin Georgescu.
”These people cannot even imagine to what extent they are discrediting Bulgaria in the EU with their behavior,” he told podcaster Martin Karbovski last week.