Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin will visit Bulgaria later this week to show US support for its NATO ally and discuss the country’s military capabilities amid the international crisis over the war in Ukraine.
US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin in Vilnius in February 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE/VALDA KALNINA
“This will be a landmark visit,” new Bulgarian Defence Minister Dragomir Zakov told Bulgarian National Radio on Tuesday as he confirmed that his US counterpart Lloyd Austin will arrive in Sofia later this week.
“This visit is not happening because Bulgaria is the weak link in the [NATO] alliance, quite the contrary – Bulgaria strives to contribute what it can and this is appreciated,” Zakov said.
Zakov, the country’s representative to NATO, was appointed to head the defence ministry earlier this month after previous minister Stefan Yanev was dismissed by parliament for promoting the idea that Bulgaria should be neutral to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Austin’s trip to Sofia will follow on from visits to Brussels and Bratislava this week amid the ongoing war in Ukraine. Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters in Washington on Monday that Austin’s tour is “about all the things we’re doing as an alliance to bolster and support our deterrence capabilities on the Eastern flank”.
Zakov and Austin will discuss a new military unit that Bulgaria is setting up. Previous minister Yanev disclosed in January that a group of 1,000 soldiers could receive training in the country’s NATO bases and that they could be under foreign command.
However, on February 25, a day after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began, President Rumen Radev said that sending locally-trained troops to Ukraine was not planned.
Radev, a former major general, said on Monday meanwhile that despite the poor state of Bulgaria’s military, he hopes that the country’s airspace will soon be policed entirely by its own forces and planes.
Currently, the country’s airspace is secured by four Eurofighter EF-2000 Typhoon II jets from Spain.
However, Defence Minister Zakov said he is not sure if Radev’s vision is possible to achieve yet.
“Our resources are modest and insufficient, so we will rely on our allies,” he said.
He added that a report on Bulgaria’s current military capabilities will be published soon.
“The modernisation of our army is a much needed process, it will be a long one and that’s why we need to work closely with our allies,” he said.
Prime Minister Kiril Petkov said on Tuesday that Bulgaria’s gas dependency on Russia won’t affect the country’s pro-NATO stance.
“Some have said to me that the gas issue and the raising of prices has got us by the throat and that we should be more balanced [to Russia] because there might be counter sanctions [from Russia] against us,” Petkov told a conference in Sofia.
But he said he is adamant that Bulgaria took the decision long ago about where it stands in the geopolitical landscape.
Source link: balkaninsight.com
