SOFIA (Reuters) – Outgoing Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov on Friday named Finance Minister Assen Vassilev as his potential successor.
He also rejected the Russian ultimatum asking him to reconsider his decision to expel 70 Russian diplomatic staff by Friday noon.
Bulgaria, a member of the European Union, NATO and once a close ally of Russia, has been facing a political crisis since the vote of a no-confidence motion against the coalition government and Kiril Petkov’s decision to expel 70 Russian diplomats accused of espionage.
Calling these expulsions an “unprecedented hostile measure”, Russia is threatening to close its embassy in Sofia, a decision that the EU condemned on Friday as unjustified.
“Unfortunately, our appeal to the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry was ignored,” Russian Ambassador to Bulgaria Eleonora Mitrofanova wrote in a statement on Friday.
“I intend to quickly submit the question of the closure of the Russian embassy in Bulgaria,” she adds.
The Bulgarian Prime Minister replied that the country’s authorities would not submit to the “ultimatums” of “foreign diplomats”.
He also announced that his party (PP, centrist) had appointed Finance Minister Assen Vassilev, a close friend, to succeed him.
The diplomatic row with Russia has fractured the Bulgarian coalition after the Socialists said they would not support a new government led by Kiril Petkov and called for a vote to reverse the expulsions.
(Tsvetelia Tsolova report; French version Alizée Degorce, edited by Sophie Louet)
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