Brussels alarm as pro-Russian parties surge in election of EU's poorest state

By Max Parry, News Reporter

Supporters of the pro-Kremlin Vazrazhdane stage a demo against Bulgaria's membership NATO in 2022 (Image: Getty)

Voters in Bulgaria went to the polls for the seventh time in four years yesterday, and despite the centre-right GERB party coming out on top, parties sympathetic to Vladimir Putin claimed a combined 21 % of the vote.

Bulgaria has been locked in political deadlock since 2020, and yesterday's ballot failed to deliver a decisive outcome yet again.

The GERB party, run by former three-time prime minister Boyko Borissov, won 26.4 % of the vote, while the pro-EU group We Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria finished second with 14.9 %.

However, when combined, pro-Kremlin parties actually won a larger share of the vote than the second-placed pro-Europe coalition.

's centre-right GERB party won the highest percentage of the vote (Image: Getty)

Vazrazhdane (Revival), an anti-NATO, nationalist party, won 12.9 % of the vote. Adding their votes to the 8.1 % won by the pro-Russian Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), takes the Putin-sympathisers past the second-placed coalition.

Despite the success of the pro-Kremlin Revival party, they will not be invited to join the governing coalition.

GERB and the pro-EU group's failure to win a majority between them means that a third party will be needed to for the next government.

Kostadin Kostadinov's far-right pro-Russian Vazrazhdane party came in third (Image: Getty)

Borissov thanked voters for their support on Monday morning, while ruling out Revival's inclusion in the new regime.

"We will work together with everyone except Revival," he said.

According to the Bulgarian News Agency, Revival's leader Kostadin Kostadinov slammed the "catastrophically low" turnout on Sunday. Just 38 percent of Bulgarians turned out, according to Euractiv.