Ivaylo Mirchev, co-chair of Yes, Bulgaria, part of the Democratic Bulgaria coalition, in an interview with Darik Radio on Saturday, commenting on Rumen Radev’s interview with Bulgarian National Television on Friday evening, 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.