Veselin Stoynev's comment:
"Just as we tolerate Borislav Gutsanov meeting with Eleonora Mitrofanova, taking into account the complexity of the coalition and their ideological attachment to Russia, so they will tolerate what we have undertaken as a commitment to our Ukrainian and Euro-Atlantic partners. This is the price of compromise. It is better for the reactors from the “Belene“ NPP to be sold to Ukraine and for money to go into the budget, instead of sitting under sheds".
These were the words of GERB leader Boyko Borisov on February 12 of this year to the media in the National Assembly - a day after the Ukrainian parliament gave permission for the purchase of the Bulgarian reactors. And the Bulgarian parliament gave its decision on the deal back in July 2023, with only the BSP and “Vazrazhdane“ opposing.
After nearly 2 years - in a circle
However, on April 15, 2025, the leader of the BSP and Deputy Prime Minister Atanas Zafirov announced at a press conference that he had received Borisov's consent not to sell the reactors to Ukraine. Energy Minister Zhecho Stankov then stated that such a decision must first be made by the coalition Joint Management Council. The Bulgarian parliament, in turn, will have to cancel its own decision on the sale of the reactors or at least have the government declare the negotiations failed.
The deal dragged on for more than the scheduled 6 months due to the fault of both parties, which in itself undermined its successful finale in a turbulent domestic political and geopolitical time. The Ukrainians were waiting for Western financing, then they asked for an installment payment, and the Bulgarians in the end decided to raise the price by $100 million. In the end, both sides will lose. Ukraine could have equipped the 3rd and 4th units of its Khmelnytsky nuclear power plant with Bulgarian reactors of Russian production, which it can no longer do with the same technology from the aggressor Russia. And Bulgaria, which after international arbitration in 2016 paid 601 million euros to Russia for the ordered reactors, will stay with them forever.
The reactors for Belene - a repeat of South Stream
And this will be personally recorded on Borisov's account, who is repeating the same exercise on the back of the Bulgarian taxpayer as with the South Stream gas pipeline. At the beginning of his premiership, Borisov called the Belene NPP project a waste, then he paid for the reactors, then he was determined to sell them at least for the price we paid for them, and finally he refused to sell them in order to bury 1.2 billion leva in the waste.
Because, as GERB's economic guru Delyan Dobrev said in July 2023, when his party voted to sell the reactors to Ukraine, they are only 10% of what we need for a new Belene NPP. There is a separate question of whether we even need this antediluvian technology and why we should tie ourselves up with Russia again, after we managed to free ourselves from its energy tutelage in the last 3 years.
The East-West, left-right tango
The fuss with the reactors is Borisov's classic east-west and left-right tango for survival and buying time. Socialist Zafirov announced his pirouette, swearing the BSP's loyalty to the governing coalition, hours before DPS-Dogan announced its departure. The same day, Borisov met with the head of “Rheinmetall“ in Dortmund to discuss the German concern's cooperation with the Bulgarian defense industry.
While the possible new reactors at the “Kozloduy“ will be modern and from Western companies, for the “Belene“ NPP there will be the possibility of Russia returning to Bulgarian nuclear energy or they will rot in our country, but they will not go to Ukraine, which is again a curtsy to Russia.
Is this just a tactical dance by Borisov until the vote of no confidence in the cabinet passes, until we receive approval for the eurozone, until they decide with Delyan Peevski whether to continue openly together or lead us to elections in the fall, until it becomes clear where Trump's adventure with Russia and Europe is going? Or is he strategically turning the country halfway to the East?
Is there a difference between Borisov and Radev?
In both cases, his sharp personalized attack on President Radev in the last week for the gas deal with the Turkish “Botaş“, from which we are losing a million leva a day, already looks like a preliminary attempt to cover up his own guilt of the same order. And against the backdrop of the straightforward Radev, who, unlike him, categorically does not want to condemn Russia's terrorist act over the Ukrainian city of Sumy, Borisov will continue to appear far more acceptable and pro-Western, while burdening Bulgaria with the same financial and geopolitical liabilities as the president.