BULGARIA after 2026 Elections: Putin’s Trojan Horse in EU…

Bulgaria’s President Rumen Radev, a military general and pilot, is now Bulgaria’s new Prime Minister. He has served two presidential terms, and in January 2026 he resigned from office and entered the early parliamentary elections. Radev’s decisive victory in the parliamentary elections is a guarantee of absolute Parliamentarian majority for the first time since 1997.

A former member of the Communist Party, he has often taken ambiguous positions regarding Russia, considering Crimea to be ‘Russian’ and criticizing the European sanctions imposed in response to the war.” Given Radev’s attitude toward Putin and Russia, there is a risk of a pro-Kremlin government at a critical moment — he would be Putin’s Trojan horse in Europe.

DW: ‘A Trojan Horse for Putin’: Foreign media on the elections in Bulgaria

France-Presse recalls that during his campaign, Radev called for “practical relations with Russia, based on mutual respect and equal treatment.”

POLITICO: Pro-Russian candidate Rumen Radev emerges as the winner of the elections in Bulgaria

CNN: Bulgaria’s Kremlin-friendly ex-president wins election in landslide

BBC: The election was called after the previous government tried to push through a controversial budget in December, prompting mass protests which Radev, as president, supported.

FoxNews: Tired of political turmoil, Bulgarians give ex-president a convincing mandate for change