Sofia blows hot and cold on Moscow

"Bulgaria is still shelling out on the new nuclear plant, though it isn’t clear it might ever see the light of day.” – “Well, why is your gas so expensive?” Dnevnik sums up the dialogue between Bulgarian prime minister Boyko Borissov and Russian first deputy prime minister Viktor Zubkov at a meeting on 6 July. The government in Sofia is sending conflicting signals on whether it will honour its socialist predecessors’ commitments to the construction of a Russian nuclear plant in Bulgaria that’s turning into a white elephant, and to the Burgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline project. Meanwhile, Gazprom, the Russian gas Goliath, is threatening to exclude Bulgaria from the South Stream gas pipeline project in retaliation. And this despite the fact that Bulgaria was the EU country with the closest ties to Moscow in recent years.