SOFIA – Bulgarian President Rumen Radev on Tuesday blamed EU leaders for Ukraine’s counter-offensive, claiming it had resulted in ‘hundreds of thousands’ of casualties.
“Who will take responsibility for the hundreds of thousands of victims in Ukraine’s counteroffensive, which many European leaders encouraged with the utopian assurance of victory over Russia?” Radev said in his speech to the Sofia Economic Forum.
The Bulgarian president is one of the few European leaders to oppose sending military aid to Kyiv. During his meetings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, Radev has engaged in several sharp exchanges, calling the war “fratricidal” and demanding that Ukraine stop it.
It is not known what data sources Radev used for his claim on the number of casualties. Russia does not update the number of dead and wounded soldiers but only reports specific Ukrainian attacks with civilian casualties on its occupied Ukrainian territory.
In his speech, Radev also criticised the West’s passivity in terms of military production. He said that while for years, the suggestion has been the Russian economy will fail, in reality, it is those in Europe that are struggling.
He added, “European economic sanctions against Moscow are becoming meaningless due to the purchase of Russian energy resources by countries from the Global South.”
The president also commented on what he believes to be a crisis of leadership in Europe and that fears over Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president are overblown.
He also claimed that 2025 is emerging as a turning point for Bulgaria, the region and Europe, but also for the world, given the unprecedented acceleration of the dynamics of geopolitical processes.
Radev insisted that Europe needs to deeply reform its governance structure and decision-making mechanisms in order to act quickly and concentrate significant resources on its strategic ambitions.
Most Bulgarian political experts expect Rumen Radev to become a leading force in Bulgarian party politics after his presidential term ends in January 2027.
(Krassen Nikolov | Euractiv.bg)
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Publish date : 2025-01-21 22:26:00
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The post Bulgarian president blames EU for Ukrainian death in counter-offensives first appeared on Love Europe.
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Publish date : 2025-01-22 06:40:12
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