Bulgaria’s new government will stop sending military aid to Ukraine, the country’s defense minister said on Tuesday, as the more than four-year-old war grinds on with no end in sight.
“We have already made it clear that the war in Ukraine will not be resolved on the battlefield,” Defense Minister Dimitar Stoyanov told reporters, according to The Associated Press.
“What we are witnessing is a war of attrition, and no matter how much weaponry is amassed, its only result is the loss of human lives. Ukraine needs more people, not more weapons. It has enough weapons, so we do not envisage providing more weapons to the Ukrainian army. It is time to sit down at the negotiating table,” he added.
Stoyanov, who took the position when the new government was formed in early May, clarified on Wednesday that Bulgaria was only halting the donation of military equipment to Ukraine and that it could still sell weapons. “We are stopping the provision of weapons and ammunition from the warehouses of the Bulgarian army. The word is provision, not sale,” he said.
Bulgaria had sent at least 13 military aid packages to Ukraine since Russia invaded in February 2022, including Soviet-made equipment in the early days of the war, and the previous government announced in March that it would join the NATO initiative under which European countries purchase US weapons to send into the conflict.
Rumen Radev, Bulgaria’s new prime minister, said on Wednesday that his country had given enough to Ukraine and called for a diplomatic solution to end the war. “We have already given enough, while our country continues to suffer socio-economic damage from this bloody war,” he said, adding he was “convinced that a peaceful solution will not be achieved by military means.”
The war in Ukraine has escalated in recent months as Ukrainian forces have stepped up US and NATO-backed long-range drone attacks targeting oil infrastructure inside Russia. Ukrainian drone attacks have also been killing more civilians, and Russia has responded by ramping up its bombardments of Ukraine.
