Dialogue with Russia ‘must be restored’ – Bulgarian election winner

The winner of the Bulgarian parliamentary election, Progressive Bulgaria’s Rumen Radev, has called for dialogue with Russia to be restored. The former president has led the newly formed left-leaning populist party to a landslide victory on a platform of critical dialogue with Brussels and pragmatism towards Moscow.

Speaking to reporters after the first exit polls showed his party well in the lead, the EU-skeptic Radev said Bulgaria would remain “on its European path,” but argued that Sofia and the bloc both need “more critical thinking” in foreign policy.

“Ask [French President Emmanuel] Macron, the prime minister of Belgium, ask other European leaders, including [German] Chancellor [Friedrich] Merz, who said that this dialogue [with Russia] must be restored,” Radev stated, stressing that engagement is necessary to shape Europe’s future security architecture and to halt its deindustrialization. “If we want Europe to have real strategic autonomy… Europe must think very seriously about how it will secure its resources, because without energy resources we cannot talk about competitiveness,” he added.

Radev argued that the bloc has undermined itself by pursuing moral leadership in what he described as a world without rules, and now needs more practical policies.