We live in historic times, because a position must be chosen. This is the historicism of today's moment, that Bulgaria can no longer get away with the trick of downgrading.
This was what journalist and political analyst Emilia Milcheva told the Bulgarian National Radio.
"We gain nothing from downgrading and from not finding the strength to raise our heads and line up where we should be, in order to defend a country that is fighting for its territorial integrity and freedom. We are not talking about whether or not Russia will be defeated, as propaganda tries to suggest. We are not talking simply about peace, but about a just and lasting peace. Those who talk so much about freedom should respect people who defend their freedom with all their might.
Bulgaria belongs to Europe and as a European country we should stick to "this team that wants to guarantee the freedom and lasting peace of Ukraine in the best way", she said.
"European values are extremely important, and they are the rule of law, freedom of the media and a market economy".
According to her, March 3 is being used as a tool by national populists to suggest a separation from "the European team to which we belong and to pull us into the orbit of servile citizens who are constantly obliged to thank the Kremlin for their statehood, which is quite a distorted suggestion".
The journalist emphasized, that nationalism is a much narrower concept than patriotism and probably the identification of nationalists as Bulgarians only goes as far as Levski and Botev:
"Patriots first of all identify themselves as Bulgarians through the language, through the creativity that the word creates, through the achievements that the Bulgarian spirit has achieved - of Bulgarian art and of Bulgarian discoverers. ... It is interesting why Bulgarian nationalists prefer to identify themselves through a much narrower circle, as they claim that these are the people who burned for Bulgarian freedom. However, how do we understand the word freedom? If an aggressor now attacks Bulgaria, will the people who are so arrogantly shouting in the squares for freedom come out to fight for it with weapons in hand? I really hope we don't have to check this! ... If these people who claim to love freedom really love it, they would not prevent other people from going to the theater, professing their values and sharing their understandings. Because in many of the cases that we observe in contemporary Bulgaria, we see that some people forcibly take away the right to free choice from other people, claiming that these people are agents of foreign interests and are harmful to Bulgarian national interests. I ask myself who gives the right to Bulgarian nationalists to determine Bulgarian national interests".