site.btaUPDATED Bulgaria Will Provide Ukraine with Armoured Transport Vehicles and Armament, Parliament Decides

Parliament Friday decided, 148-52, to provide Ukraine with additional military-technical assistance. The draft resolution was tabled by MPs of GERB-UDF, Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria, and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, and was backed by these parliamentary groups and five MPs of There Is Such a People. The votes against came from 37 MPs of Vazrazhdane and 15 MPs of BSP for Bulgaria.

The resolution reads that Bulgaria will give Ukraine armoured transport vehicles with the available armament for them and spare parts of their servicing that the Interior Ministry no longer needs.

According to the reasoning, in the last 25 years the maintenance and storage of the vehicles in question has required significant financial costs from the budget. Also, the equipment would hardly be applicable to the implementation of the Gendarmerie's main tasks. Therefore, a large part of it has been deemed no longer necessary for the Interior Ministry's needs.

Ivaylo Mirchev from the CC-DB clarified that the proposal is to provide military equipment to Ukraine, not from the Bulgarian Army, but from the warehouses of the Ministry of Interior.

He said that he would like to dispel several myths. "The first is that if we provide armoured vehicles to Ukraine, we will reduce the Army's combat capabilities - this is not true, because this equipment has no relation to the Army, it is simply in the Interior Ministry," Mirchev said.

It is also a myth, in his words, that the assistance Bulgaria provides to Ukraine is costly. "So far we have provided aid to Ukraine once and it was worth BGN 20 million. Ukraine has so far bought arms from us worth BGN 5 billion and we have given it only BGN 20 million," Mirchev said. In his words, by the end of the year these billions that Ukraine has invested will become seven, which makes it one of the pretty big investors in the Bulgarian economy.

"The next myth is that others do not give as much as we do to Ukraine - this is not the case," Mirchev said. "Another myth was that no one would compensate us for the military equipment we provide". According to the MP, it is also a myth that by providing about 100 armoured personnel carriers Bulgaria is reducing the operational capabilities of its Interior Ministry.

The next myth, according to Mirchev, is that "instead of modernising our Army, we are thinking about other armies. This is nonsense, because we cannot modernize the Army with armored vehicles from the 1960s and 1970s. It was also a myth that if we give arms to Ukraine, we are going to war with Russia," he said.

The BSP for Bulgaria insisted that two ministers - of the Interior and of Defence - be summoned to the plenary.

Vazrazhdane proposed that the security services be invited.

According to Andrei Chorbanov of There Is Such a People, it is clear that these armoured personnel carriers cannot be used by the Army. He said he would ask the disasters and emergencies commission and the civil protection if the armoured personnel carriers would do the job as heavy-duty machines.

Hristo Gadzhev of GERB-UDF explained that the Council of Ministers should conclude an agreement with the Government of Ukraine. The same agreement, with the specific numbers, etc., must come to Parliament for ratification, so nothing would be sent without parliamentary sanction, he said.

Socialist leader Korneliya Ninova said that she had filed lawsuits over allegations that weapons were exported to Ukraine while she was minister of economy, and read out a first instance court ruling in her favour. She also called on the MPs who claim that this happened during her term in office to waive their immunities so that the dispute could be resolved in court.

Nikolay Drenchev of Vazrazhdane said that these are not old, unusable or not needed machines. He believes that the police, the firefighting and civil protection service and the Army need them. His party proposed that the draft resolution be changed, so that Bulgaria does not provide Ukraine armoured transport equipment. Parliament rejected it.

BSP for Bulgaria MP Kristian Vigenin said the reason he is included in the list posted on the Myrotvorets Ukrainian website is a statement he had mande in Parliament. Vigenin said he has always held the principled position regarding Ukraine, which has always been based on international law and Bulgaria’s strategic interest. According to Vigenin, this strategic interest is for the war to end, for just and lasting peace, a democratic and free Ukraine that is a member of the EU, as well as a democratic Russia that is part of the international community and a constructive partner of Bulgaria and the EU, as well as for all economic sanctions to be lifted