The Atlantic Council of Bulgaria has been warning for years the senior military and political leadership of the defense for the existence of systemic problems in the management of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Bulgaria. The main problem from which all the negative phenomena in defense originate – insufficient funding, weak combat training, protracted separation of Soviet equipment, delayed rearmament, technological backwardness, deplorable state of defense infrastructure, low motivation to serve in the armed forces, even lack of willingness to serve in NATO structures, stem from the growing politicization of the senior officer corps and its hidden fusion with political parties and political personalities.
We have witnessed how many generals and admirals overnight changed their general offices to parliamentary ones, and one of them – with presidential. As a result of this poisonous practice, against which there is no functioning legal barrier, all political decisions regarding the country's defense are accompanied not by impartial, but by politically expedient military “expertise”. This makes most of these decisions wrong, harmful and dangerous to national security, while masking them as democratically perfect.
This symbiosis between the top military expertise and the political players in our country is gradually and inevitably eroding the Army and its competence and ability to fight, while ensuring impunity and impunity for the biggest violations, abuses, losses and wastes – when such accidentally come to the attention of the Bulgarian society.
Today, with great regret and with righteous civil anger, we note once again that despite our numerous warnings and appeals, the political and military leadership of the defense not only did not take measures, but harmful practices have taken deep roots in the senior leadership of the Armed Forces forces and in particular in our Air Force. And in the air, every mistake is punished in the most categorical way: in the loss of priceless human life, in depriving the Armed Forces of extremely scarce and extremely expensive skills and combat capabilities, and in the destruction of valuable combat equipment. This is exactly what happened on September 13, 2024 at the Third Air Force Base, in another tragic incident – we lost in peacetime two Bulgarian officers, two of the few most trained combat pilots in the Air Force, one destroyed military plane and two blackened Bulgarian families.
Along with this successive failure, for the last three years, in peacetime, Bulgaria lost three pilots and three planes. On June 9, 2021, Major Valentin Terziev died in the sea near Shabla with a MiG-29. On September 28, 2022, we lost a Su-25 combat aircraft in another incident in the Bezmer area, fortunately without casualties.
The Atlantic Council of Bulgaria expresses its position most categorically that the Chief of Defense Admiral Emil Eftimov, the Commander of the Air Force Major General Dimitar Petrov and the Commander of the Third Air Base Brigadier General Nikolay Rusev bear direct personal responsibility for this dire situation.< /p>
The tragedy and enormous loss that occurred is the result of:
1. Systematic display of irresponsibility and neglect of the risks, in providing its military expertise on the admissibility of using fighter pilots in shows with extreme risk to the lives of the pilots, to the lives of ordinary citizens in the area of the show, risk of loss of invaluable operational capability of the Bulgarian Army and the risk of losing extremely expensive military equipment. At the same time, despite the Air Force's dire state of extremely insufficient flight training and a small number of serviceable aircraft.
2. Suggesting or their tacit agreement that the Air Force be used for cheap political PR of President Radev, thus proving the absence of party-political impartiality, in contrast to the required and expected service of the entire people and country.
3. Systematically misleading, with their military expert advice and opinions, the political leadership of the state, in the person of the executive and legislative branches, to maintain an undermanned, unmodernized, unmotivated and untrained Air Force, at its present numbers in terms of men, serviceable aircraft and organization , despite the clarity of the state's limited ability to provide an Air Force in its current size. Keeping far above the required number of pilots in the Air Force seems to be for the sole purpose of draining the defense budget in the form of flying allowances at the expense of training young pilots.
For the human casualties, operational damage, material losses of the indicated scale and depth, and the moral damage caused to the motivation of the Bulgarian Army, there is no other compensation than the last gesture of military valor, which is assumed by the military oath, namely – voluntary resignation of those responsible for this failure.
Their remaining in service will cause even more serious harm to the moral stability of the Bulgarian Army and will irreversibly corrupt military honor, valor, mutual trust and responsibility, especially among officers – current and future leaders of the Bulgarian armed forces. Something more – will call into question the impartiality of the investigation into the September 13, 2024 incident.
That is why the Atlantic Council of Bulgaria, expressing the positions of a large part of civil society and a significant number of Bulgarian military personnel, insists that the senior military leadership of the Bulgarian Army and the Bulgarian Air Force take their personal responsibility by submitting their resignations immediately. as follows:
1. Admiral Emil Eftimov – chief of defense;
2. Major General Dimitar Petrov – commander of the Air Force;
3. Brigadier General Nikolay Rusev - commander of the Third Air Base.
Let the investigation of the tragic incident be competent, methodical and without outside interference, without outside attempts at political or military influence and without predetermined finding of “guilty” from the lowest possible levels in the military hierarchy.
Political speculations and attempts to exploit the Bulgarian army for the needs of this or that party must finally be categorically stopped and the Bulgarian lawmakers must finally guarantee truly working legal barriers against party and political affiliation of the Bulgarian army officers.< /p>
Otherwise, further casualties await us, a demotivated Bulgarian army and certain losses on the battlefield if such a situation arises.