site.bta"Is Bulgaria Planning to Donate S-300 Anti-aircraft Missile Systems to Ukraine?" Ranking Socialist Asks

At a briefing at the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) headquarters on Thursday, BSP deputy leader and deputy Parliament Chair Kristian Vigenin put a series of questions to Defence Minister Todor Tagarev. Among them was the question: "Is Minister Tagarev planning to hand over the S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems to Ukraine? Because the information we have is that this is planned to happen in two steps. First, the ammunition for these anti-aircraft missile systems will be provided and then, under the pretext that there is nowhere to find new ones and the service life of the current ones has expired, the anti-aircraft missile systems themselves will be handed over," said Vigenin, warning that the systems are guarding the Kozloduy N-Plant and Sofia and there is no way to replace them.

Vigenin also drew attention to the information that reports about servicemen quitting the armed forces are increasing.

"We want to know what the Minister will do if this is the case, so that it stops happening and the Bulgarian army is strengthened," the Socialist insisted.

He said that the joint meeting of the parliamentary foreign policy and defence committees requested by the BSP to hear the Minister on Bulgaria's security had not yet been convened to publicly ask him the Socialists' questions.

"Insofar as there are obvious plans to expand NATO's military presence in Bulgaria, to date there is no answer to the question of how the increased presence of ground forces in Bulgaria strengthens Bulgaria's security, given that Bulgaria has no land border with either Belarus or Russia, unlike the countries where this presence has already been expanded," Vigenin pointed out.

He stressed that it was not clear what the Minister's real assessments of the threats in the Black Sea were, given that he said on bTV Thursday morning that Russia's capabilities in the Black Sea had diminished and he did not believe there was a direct threat, while at the same time an expanded NATO naval presence was being planned.