SOFIA -- Bulgarian protesters, some carrying Russian flags, vandalized a building in the capital, Sofia, that houses European Union officials as they called for their government to halt aid to Ukraine.
The protesters tossed red paint on the modern glass-and-steel building where representatives of the European Commission and the European Parliament are based.
The May 21 demonstration was organized by several nongovernmental organizations and individuals with pro-Kremlin leanings. The participants, who may have numbered as many as 1,000, included members of the anti-EU Revival party as well as parliamentarians.
The demonstration was the sixth in as many weeks but the first time that it had resulted in an act of vandalism.
Bulgaria has deep, historical ties to Russia and is sometimes called a “Trojan horse” within the EU and NATO for its pro-Moscow leanings.
The United States and the EU have given tens of billions of dollars in military and financial aid to Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion in February 2022. Yet some countries, like Bulgaria and Hungary, have been less supportive of the effort to back Kyiv.
Revival and the Bulgarian Socialist Party, the successor to the Communist Party, have voted against sending military aid to Ukraine, claiming that such actions could thrust the country into the war.
Sarnela Vodenicharova, one of the organizers of the demonstration, said the goal of the protests is to collect enough signatures to hold a referendum on the question of whether the country should be “drawn into wars,” a misleading characterization of the situation.
Bulgaria is protected by its membership in NATO and any Russian attack against the country would trigger a response by the 31-member alliance, a threat Moscow takes seriously.
Under former Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov, a pro-EU politician, Bulgaria secretly supplied fuel and ammunition to Ukraine in the early months of war.
Bulgaria still has significant amounts of Soviet-era ammunition that could be used by Ukraine.