Bulgarian President won't attend NATO summit due to disagreement over support for Ukraine

Rumen Radev, Bulgaria's pro-Russian president, has declined to lead the Bulgarian mission at the NATO meeting in Washington due to "the position that he must defend regarding assistance to Ukraine".

Source: Radev's press service on Thursday 27 June, writes Bulgarian service Radio Liberty, as reported by European Pravda 

Details: According to Radev's office, the proposal for Bulgaria's President to participate in the NATO summit specified that he must "submit framework positions" agreed upon by the government and approve the documents based on them.

Quote: "The head of state does not agree with certain provisions of the framework positions adopted by the Council of Ministers regarding the obligations that our country assumes in connection with the war in Ukraine," the statement said.

The President of Bulgaria and the cabinet have not revealed what these "framework positions" include.

The disagreement over the Bulgarian mission to NATO has lasted several days. Last week, the administration decided to send Acting Prime Minister Dimitar Glavchev to the conference together with Rumen Radev.

Glavchev offered on Thursday that Radev would lead the Bulgarian delegation to Washington.

Bulgaria's Constitution states that the country should be represented internationally by the executive branch, which is currently led by Dimitar Glavchev.

The current Bulgarian president has long advocated opinions on the war in Ukraine that are consistent with the Kremlin's position: offering military assistance to Kyiv merely prolongs the conflict, and those who advocate aid to the Ukrainian resistance are proponents of war. 

Radev recently criticised NATO for enabling Ukraine to use Western weapons on the Russian Federation’s territory, claiming that this leads to "escalation" and "nuclear Armageddon".

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