Bulgaria secretly supplied Ukraine with weapons and fuel in the first months of the war. This is stated in an investigation by the German newspaper Welt, published on Wednesday. According to Welt journalists, supplies from Bulgaria in the spring of 2022 could account for up to 30 percent of all ammunition and up to 40 percent of diesel fuel that then went to the Ukrainian army.
The journalists base their conclusions on interviews conducted with Defense Minister of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba, former Prime Minister of Bulgaria Kyril Petkov and Asen Vasilev, who held the post of Minister of Finance in Petkov's government. Petkov publicly rejected the possibility of direct military aid to Ukraine, but the supply was carried out through intermediary companies in Romania, Hungary and Poland. According to Welt, the US and Great Britain paid for the operation. The Bulgarian army has significant reserves of Soviet-made ammunition, which found use in the armed forces of Ukraine, whose combat equipment at the beginning of the war also met mostly Soviet standards.
Similarly, Bulgaria supplied Ukraine with diesel fuel. It was produced at the oil refinery in Burgas, which then belonged to the Russian company Lukoil, from Russian crude oil. According to Vasylev, in the first phase of the war, Bulgaria became the main exporter of diesel fuel to Ukraine.
Dmytro Kuleba confirmed that in the first months of the war there was a danger that the Ukrainian army might run out of ammunition by the end of April, and he went to Bulgaria for negotiations on behalf of President Volodymyr Zelenskyi to agree on supplies.
In June 2022, the head of the Bulgarian state defense export company Kintex, Oleksandr Mykhaylov, said that Bulgaria had supplied Ukraine with ammunition worth about two billion euros. Officially, supplies were made to intermediary countries. Diesel fuel was delivered by sea and land to Romania, from where it was transported to Ukraine.
In December 2022, the Bulgarian government officially approved the direct supply of weapons to Ukraine. In November 2022, Sofia asked the European Commission for permission to export petroleum products to a number of countries, including Ukraine. The oil refinery in Burgas has been completely under the control of Bulgaria since the beginning of this year.
