Bulgaria is included in a declassified list of 32 European sites that Russia could strike with missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, Western media have revealed. The information was originally published by the Financial Times in August 2024 and was reported in the Daily Express and other international publications.
Among the specific targets is the Ruse-Giurgiu bridge, which connects Bulgaria with Romania over the Danube River. Although the data comes from authoritative sources, a number of experts warn that the documents are old and may not reflect Moscow's current military plans.
According to publications in the Financial Times and the Daily Express, the information is based on secret documents prepared between 2008 and 2014 - more than a decade before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The documents contain 29 presentations for Russian officers and describe plans for the Russian naval forces.
The critical question is how relevant military plans between 11 and 17 years old are. Since they were prepared, Russia has modernized a significant part of its naval forces, changed its military doctrine and gone through a war in Ukraine that revealed serious weaknesses in its conventional armed forces.
The Financial Times itself notes that the maps were "for presentation purposes, not for operational use". This means that they may never have been part of actual military plans, but simply training materials for officers. The lack of information about exactly how Western sources obtained the documents also raises questions about their authenticity and the context in which they were used.
According to the revelations, in the event of a global escalation, Russia is considering the possibility of striking targets in Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey. The Ruse-Giurgiu bridge has been mentioned as a potential target, according to the Romanian media outlet Romania Insider, but there has been no official confirmation from any NATO intelligence service about the specific sites in Bulgaria.
It should be noted that every military power, including NATO, maintains lists of potential targets in the territory of potential adversaries. This is standard practice in military planning and does not necessarily indicate an intention to attack. The documents reveal more about how Russia was thinking more than a decade ago than what its plans are today.
William Alberk, a former NATO official, told the Financial Times that the list of 32 targets was only a small part of potentially thousands of sites. "They want the fear of Russian nuclear weapons being used to be the magic key that unlocks Western consent," the expert commented.
However, his assessment can be interpreted in two ways - either as a warning of a real danger or as an admission that the disclosure of such documents serves to psychologically influence the Western public. In the context of the information war between Russia and the West, both sides have an interest in exaggerating threats - Russia to threaten, the West to justify military spending.
The revelations come against the backdrop of the ongoing war in Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin's repeated nuclear threats to the West. Russia has already deployed tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, but has not used nuclear weapons even in the face of the loss of a significant part of its Black Sea Fleet and attacks on targets deep inside Russian territory.
According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, US President Donald Trump's proposal to extend the "New START" treaty is "reason for optimism". This shows that despite the threatening rhetoric, both Russia and the West are looking for ways to control nuclear weapons.