Comment by Emilia Milcheva:
It is difficult not to be left with this impression: the newspeak of the "Radev" cabinet has a first rule that everyone already knows - never mention Russia. The government can talk about the war in Ukraine, but not who started it. About drones with or without explosives, but not who sends them. About sabotage and hybrid attacks, but not who carries them out. He can fantasize about air and space shields - as long as he doesn't say who they will protect from, probably from some atmospheric influences.
However, European Council President Antonio Costa is not subject to this and announced from Sofia that Russian threats will not reduce the EU's determination to support Ukraine. Europe will not back down and will increase pressure until Russia stops the killings and shows a real commitment to peace, Costa said.
On the neighboring podium, Prime Minister Rumen Radev spoke about "crises", "challenges", common security, protection from drones, and a European air and space shield. He did not mention either Russia as the source of threats to European security, or Ukraine as a victim. And according to Costa himself, the two discussed both Russian aggression and Moscow's dangerous escalation.
Radev was hardly lacking information about the source and nature of the threats. Just a day earlier, he met with Scott Bray, NATO's Assistant Secretary General for Intelligence and Security, in the presence of the heads of DANS and DAR Plamen Tonchev and Antoine Gechev. The official purpose of the visit was to prepare for the Bulgarian chairmanship of the NATO Civil Intelligence Committee. But it is unlikely that the Russian threats were kept quiet in the conversation with the high-ranking NATO representative. "Censorship" begins where closed meetings end and one must speak to Bulgarian citizens.
Progressive communication
This is clearly the charter by which the communication of Prime Minister Rumen Radev, his ministers and deputies is governed. One might think that it was handed out to them along with the party membership cards for "Progressive Bulgaria". The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) is diligent - and has shown how it is done. It condemned the attack in Leipzig without naming the country that Germany blamed for it. Berlin officially announced that Russia was responsible for the hybrid attack in Leipzig on August 4.
It turns out that the drone with explosives in Leipzig arrived alone, and the war in Ukraine is being fought for unknown reasons.
"Bulgaria expresses solidarity with Germany after the hybrid attack in Leipzig", the Foreign Ministry announced in X. Thus, Sofia is showing solidarity with Germany without showing solidarity with Germany. The diplomatic arithmetic is simple: you subtract the content from solidarity and you get zero. And a series of such zeros erases the efforts of previous governments to make Bulgaria a reliable and predictable ally. They are returning it to the gray area - formally part of the EU and NATO, but always ready to stoop when Russia needs to be mentioned.
Otherwise, in the government's newspeak, this passes for foreign policy: you condemn the act, but you protect the attacker.
Pressed by GERB MP Georg Georgiev during parliamentary control, Radev uttered the forbidden word, but only to defend its silence. "Europe is not a competition for conformism and if you insist that Bulgaria must be part of the escalation, I have no such intentions", he said. Germany was "our leading ally, economic and investment partner", but Bulgaria had to retain "a particle of reason".
According to the authorities, reason clearly requires that the Russian hybrid attack against our leading ally be kept quiet so as not to irritate Russia. "Europe can exist without Russia, but Europe will hardly exist for long against Russia", Radev said in parliament today. The Prime Minister defended the Foreign Minister's reaction as "completely adequate", opposed the Russian hybrid attack by sending long-range weapons to Ukraine, and again reminded of Russia's hypersonic and nuclear arsenal, against which Europe was powerless.
Thus, Russia finally appeared in the sentence - not as an attacker, but as an invincible force, which, according to Radev, Europe is recklessly trying to confront with conventional means. And allied solidarity now means standing firmly by Germany, while being careful not to stand against the country that attacked it.
The same political balancing act was applied to the "Coalition of the Willing" - you participate in the informal format to support Ukraine, and then you claim that you were never in it because you were not given a membership card. The previous government participated in its work, but Radev announced that Bulgaria was withdrawing, and then Foreign Minister Velislava Petrova explained that there was no way we could leave something in which we had never officially been a member.
Is Roskomnadzor operating in Bulgaria?
The attack in Leipzig is no exception. In May, Radev spoke about the "conflict in Ukraine" and insisted that Europe change its policy and start negotiations with Russia. In July, he announced that the "collective West" was trying to achieve a conventional victory over the "largest nuclear power", thus increasing the risk of a "nuclear response". In this narrative, Russia is not a country that has invaded a neighboring country, but an element that should not be provoked.
That is, responsibility lies not with the one who threatens with nuclear weapons, but with the one who refuses to be afraid of them.
This vocabulary is not a Bulgarian invention. After the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor ordered the media to remove the definitions of "war", "attack" and "invasion" and to use the official "special military operation".
Soon after, the legislation on "fake news" turned deviation from the Kremlin's version into a crime, punishable by up to 15 years in prison. In order to control reality, the vocabulary with which it can be described was first cleansed.
The "Radev" cabinet does not ban words by law and does not threaten with imprisonment. It does not have to. It transposes Russian censorship into the official Bulgarian language. "Conflict" replaces aggression, "escalation" - the Kremlin's threats, and the "hybrid attack" remains without a perpetrator. Moscow has forbidden the Russians to call war a war. Sofia seems to be taking the next step - Russia can be named, but not as an aggressor, but only as a force that should not be provoked.
In Bulgaria today for one-on-one talks with Rumen Radev is the Prime Minister of Slovakia Robert Fico - Radev's supporter of limiting sanctions against Russia and stopping military aid to Ukraine. Fico at least names the aggressor, as long as he is not punished and his victim is not armed.
And so, word by word, until Russia begins to seem to us like a normal country in a normal war.