Novinite: How Bulgaria’s New Prime Minister Buries South Stream
In an article, entitled “How Bulgaria’s New Prime Minister Buries South Stream” the Russian website slon.ru, the author Maxim Samorukov concludes that the South Stream pipeline project might as well be put on hold, as long as Bulgaria’s PM Boyko Borisov is in power.
“Moscow understands that Bulgaria is the weakest link in the project,” Samorukov writes. “(Victor) Orban, who is always willing to negotiate with whoever suits him best, will be in power in Hungary for a while, the Serbian love for Russia is centuries long, but in Bulgaria the unstable governments fluctuate between close cooperation with Russia and full severance of the agreements, in spite of the multi-billion penalties. But carrying out without Bulgaria is impossible, because in anti-Russian Romania we cannot absolutely no one, while we could get along lovely with Bulgaria's socialists, as they are former communists and communist youth leaders.”
Samorukov notes that Borisov had made the abandoning of the South Stream project one of the mainstays of his election campaign and had previously terminated two other Russian energy projects in Bulgaria – the Belene NPP and the Burgas-Alexandroupoli pipeline – during his first tenure as prime minister.