Is Bulgaria going to be ruled by another Viktor Orban? Or will the corruption prevalent in the country finally be dealt with?
These are the big questions being asked by the media after former President Rumen Radev’s new party, Progressive Bulgaria, won the parliamentary elections on April 19 and secured an absolute majority in the new parliament.
Radev avoided giving clear answers to questions before the election, which meant that for many observers, most of his plans and those of his partners in the coalition of three small parties that he had put together in just a few weeks remained unclear.
What does his biography tell us?
Who is Rumen Radev?
Rumen Radev was born in 1963 in the town of Haskovo, near the Bulgarian-Turkish border. His parents and relatives say that even as a young child, he had planned to pursue a career in aviation.
In 1987, when Bulgaria was still a communist dictatorship and a member of the Warsaw Pact, he began training to become a pilot.
In 1992, two years after Bulgaria became a democratic country, Radev completed his training as an officer in the US.
In 2005, a year after Bulgaria joined NATO, he was made commander of the Bulgarian Air Force.
The Kremlin’s man in Sofia?
Rumen Radev first ran for president in 2016. He was nominated by the Bulgarian Socialist Party, the successor to the Bulgarian Communist Party, which ruled the country from 1944 to 1990.
At the time, it was reported that Radev’s candidacy had been discussed with the powers that be in Moscow.
A short time later, Leonid Reshetnikov, a longtime member of the intelligence services of the Soviet Union and later the Russian Federation, who was then head of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, bragged that he had discussed Radev’s candidacy with the leadership of the BSP.
Since then, possible ties between Radev – who won the 2016 presidential election – and the Kremlin have been the focus of media and public attention.
This interest increased after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
What is Radev’s stance on Ukraine?
In 2021, Radev ran for re-election as President. During the only TV debate before the election, Anastas Gerdzhikov, candidate of the conservative, pro-European GERB party, asked Radev pointedly: “Whose does Crimea belong to?”
Radev replied that it “is currently Russian. What else could it be?” He later softened his remarks, saying that “Crimea belongs to Ukraine, but it is currently controlled by Russia.”
After Russia’s all-out attack on Ukraine, Radev said that Russia should stop its military operations. However, in the months that followed, his rhetoric increasingly targeted Ukraine and the European Union.
Radev argued that providing military aid to Kiev only prolonged the war, that the Ukrainian counter-offensive was a mistake and that politicians sending arms and ammunition to Ukraine were “war mongers”.
All this raises serious questions about the extent to which Radev will maintain Bulgaria’s pro-European stance on Ukraine, which has been adopted by the coalition partners of the last two governments, and whether Radev can block common EU decisions on Ukraine, as former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban did for years.
The next Viktor Orban?
“I would not compare him with Orban [Robert] Slovakia’s Fico,” said Pavol Szalai, director of Reporters Without Borders’ Prague bureau, who spoke to Radev last fall.
“Russian propaganda is widespread in Bulgaria,” Szalai told DW. “This is one of the main problems for citizens and their access to information.”
According to Katherine Belton of the US broadsheet Washington PostThe risks posed by Russian disinformation appeared to be so great that “Sofia’s Foreign Ministry established a special unit in coordination with the European Commission to deal with potential Russian interference.”
Radev said it was an attempt by Brussels to interfere in the voting, he said.
“Radev’s campaign was promoted by a network of former senior Bulgarian military officers who have ties to Russian military intelligence and have supported Radev by promoting his views against Ukraine,” wrote Belton, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
Will Radev crack down on corruption?
In 2021, while he was still president, Radev expressed support for the massive anti-corruption and anti-government protests in Bulgaria.
“Let’s get rid of the mafia!” He announced in front of the protesters, who were highly critical of former Prime Minister and GERB party leader Boyko Borissov and Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS) leader Dalyan Peevski, accusing them of corruption and capture of the judiciary.
The US and Britain have imposed sanctions on Peevski for alleged corruption. For this reason, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe decided to exclude his party from the group. Then DPS left the alliance of its own free will.
Following the 2021 protests, a new party – the pro-European, liberal, anti-corruption We Continue the Change Party – entered the political stage. Its leaders, Kirill Petkov and Asen Vasiliev, were part of the interim government appointed by Radev.
Who will Radev work with?
More large-scale protests broke out in Bulgaria in December 2025. This time the trigger was the budget, but Borisov and Peevski were once again the target.
One of the organizers of the protests was We Continue the Change, which is now in coalition with another pro-European party, Democratic Bulgaria.
Radev could potentially seek the support of this coalition (PP-DB) for a qualified majority that would allow him to replace those in the judiciary and other key state institutions whom he considers linked to Borisov and Peevski.
On the other hand, Radev has shown no desire to enter into any kind of cooperation with the nationalist, pro-Russian Revival Party, which will also be part of the next parliament.
This article was originally published in German.