site.btaBulgaria Marks 146th Anniversary of Liberation from Ottoman Rule

Bulgaria celebrated its national day on Sunday. March 3 marks the 146th anniversary of the signing of the Preliminary Peace Treaty of San Stefano in 1878, which ended the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish War and restored Bulgarian statehood, following 482 years of Ottoman rule in the Bulgarian lands. 

This year, the town of Kazanlak (Central Bulgaria) hosted the commemorations on Mt. Shipka in the Central Balkan Range. They began with a prayer service at the Church of the Nativity of Christ in the town of Shipka followed by a solemn commemoration ceremony at the Monument to Liberty. 

President Rumen Radev and National Assembly Chair Rosen Zhelyazkov addressed the thousands of people gathered near the monument. 

President Rumen Radev said: "We should be mindful that March 3 is our memory and tribute to the sacrifice of generations of Bulgarians who kept a glimmer of hope and carried on their struggle in the long winter of slavery. March 3 is our national ideal for a free, united, and European Bulgaria. March 3 is our future as a nation with dignity and aspiration for progress."  

National Assembly Chair Rosen Zhelyazkov also addressed the nation from Mt. Shipka, saying that this place is a "symbol of the quest for freedom, unity, and our national pride". He went on to say that "this land is soaked with the blood of Bulgarian volunteers, Russian soldiers, soldiers from Serbia, Montenegro, Ukraine, Belarus". 

Bulgaria's National Day was marked with commemorative events across the country. 

In Sofia, a ceremony of raising the national flag took place in front of the Monument to the Unknown Soldier. It was attended by Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov, Deputy Prime Minister Mariya Gabriel, cabinet ministers, Chief of Defence Admiral Emil Eftimov, Sofia Mayor Vassil Terziev, representatives of diplomatic missions and religious denominations in Bulgaria, among others. Later in the day, the officials attended a solemn military tattoo in the National Assembly Square. 

President Rumen Radev received the honorary guard of the representative units of the Bulgarian armed forces. In his address, the head of State said that on Sunday Bulgaria celebrates its enduring national ideal of freedom, unity and statehood.  

Soldiers carried the sacred flags of the Bulgarian armed forces, symbols of the most noble traditions and virtues of Bulgarian soldiers, a reminder of the heroic feat of the Bulgarian army: the Samara Flag, the flag of the 23rd Shipka Infantry Regiment, the flag of the 15th Infantry Lom Regiment, the flag of the 13th Infantry Rila Regiment, the flag of the 25th Infantry Dragoman Regiment, the flag of the 30th Infantry Sheynovo Regiment, the flag of the Gorna Oryahovitsa insurgents, and the flag of the 24th Infantry Black Sea Regiment.  

At the end of the ceremony, attendees knelt in memory of those who died for the freedom of Bulgaria. The national anthem was played.  

Later, the Head of State hosted a traditional official reception on the occasion of Bulgaria’s National Day, March 3, at the Central Military Club in Sofia.