New Defense Minister believes it is Extremely Important for Bulgaria to provide Military Aid to Ukraine

The new Minister of Defense Todor Tagarev insisted that it is necessary for Bulgaria to continue providing military aid to Ukraine.

"This is extremely important in order to guarantee our security. What exactly we will give depends on many other things - on real needs at this moment, on what we have at our disposal at the moment. There must be permission from the National Assembly and that's exactly how we will act - in a transparent and clear way, as it should be done in a parliamentary republic," Tagarev said.

"Ukraine's security and independence are extremely important for our entire region to be secure for years to come," he also commented.

Asked if there is a request from Ukraine for the provision of specific military aid, the Minister of Defense replied that no specific documents have been presented to him so far.

"Next week there is a ministerial meeting in Brussels, which will be preceded by a Ramstein-style meeting and I suppose there I will get clearer information about the specific requests. This is important because the needs change gradually. We will see with what we can best help", Tagarev also noted.

Before taking office, he repeatedly advocated the position that Bulgaria should provide a significant part of its old Soviet armaments to Ukraine in exchange for more modern Western ones. At the end of 2022, the previous 48th National Assembly decided to send military aid to Ukraine in the amount of 20 million leva. According to a publication of the authoritative German publication "Die Welt" from the beginning of 2023, the coalition government of Kiril Petkov at the beginning of the war provided fuel and Soviet weapons to Ukraine at a difficult time for the military, but secretly, because of...