We all support stopping the bloody war and the loss of human lives. We all want to see the situation calm down. We all want to see these armed conflicts that are happening right next to our border stop. However, this does not mean abdication from protecting our national security and retreating from defending our national interests. This is what GERB MP Georg Georgiev said in connection with the ships hit today in the Black Sea.
Last week we warned - if Bulgaria does not give a sufficiently firm and understandable response from the aggressor to what happened in the Black Sea, it will not be long before this incident is repeated. And today we are seeing exactly that. Two ships were hit again, but this time only three miles from Bulgarian territorial waters, he added.
According to him, the authorities did not classify the case of the first two hit ships as "serious", since it was in the exclusive economic zone.
"We see that the hostilities are getting incredibly close to Bulgarian territory. At the CSNS last week, Mr. Borisov was perhaps the only one who explicitly indicated who the aggressor is in this war. We said that until we properly articulate the reasons, the grounds for what is happening, we cannot issue a definitive answer," Georgiev added.
And he added: "Today, in the presence of a new attack, Prime Minister Radev repeated exactly the same thing as last week. No new element, except for the smokescreen for summoning the Russian ambassador. Anyone who understands at least a little about international relations knows that the ambassador is not equal to the prime minister. There are many other levels that must be activated beforehand - namely, from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in the appropriate way to state the firm and categorical position of the state and to make it clear what Bulgaria thinks. Until last year, when GERB was in power, there were no such incidents. This is not a coincidence, but is due to the fact that we have used all national and international tools to state that we will not tolerate such behavior near our borders.
Prime Minister Radev could have called the spokesman Peskov directly, or President Putin, or President Erdogan and asked in plain text - do we owe this aggression to you, are the drones Russian? And not a week later and four blown up ships later, we are still wandering whether they are Russian or assume that they may be Ukrainian. Today, among the affected people from her crew are Ukrainians. I doubt that the Ukrainian side is trying to kill its own people, Georgiev pointed out.
The briefing made it clear that the ERB will insist on an extraordinary session of parliament, at which the government will provide more information about the attacks.