Why is Bulgaria the most vulnerable among NATO Members to Russian propaganda?
By Georgi Gotev, Euractiv Senior Editor
Some countries have a ‘reflection day’ before elections, with political activity and statements forbidden and the sale of alcohol sometimes restricted.
I was in Bulgaria for their reflection day on 1 October, just ahead of the fourth general election in 18 months, to speak at a NATO-sponsored conference at the American University in Blagoevgrad (AUBG).
The invitation was compelling. I was born in Blagoevgrad 64 years ago, and in my childhood, if somebody had told me there would be an American university there, I would have replied that they should go and see a doctor.
Now that I live in Belgium, returning to ‘Blago,’ as the international students call it, is a sentimental journey.
So, on the occasion of reflection day, we reflected on disinformation and political contestation in Central and Eastern Europe. My intervention asked: “Why is Bulgaria the Most Vulnerable among NATO Members to Russian Fake News?” and – inevitably – broke all the rules of not mentioning Bulgarian politics.“
The session was interactive, and my first question to the audience was which political parties in Bulgaria could be considered pro-Russian.
The result was very interesting.
Apart from the openly pro-Russian party Vazrazhdane, the new political party ‘Bulgarian rise’ of former caretaker prime minister Stefan Yanev and the traditionally pro-Russian Bulgarian Socialist party (BSP), other parties were named as covertly pro-Russian, including Boyko Borissov’s GERB.
Borissov made pro-EU and pro-Atlantic statements during his time in power, from 2014 to 2017, but he effectively served the interests of Gazprom, in particular by building the Bulgarian section of TurkStream – the southern equivalent of the infamous Nord Streams.
Russia has very successfully promoted its messages in Bulgaria for decades. Thirty years ago, I noticed that my fellow journalists’ take on foreign news was completely different from mine.
While I was using sources such as Reuters, AFP, or the BBC, many of my colleagues were relying on lenta.ru, a Russian website.
The main reason was the language – translating from Russian was easier for them. But as a result, the international page could appear completely different, as if we were living on other planets.
Russia is spending a lot of money on Bulgarian media, officially and unofficially. In addition, Russia also counts on the “useful idiots” who repeat their messages for free. And there are plenty of useful idiots among the politicians, media, and blogosphere.
These days I compare Bulgaria and Belgium daily, and there is an enormous difference in how much Russian propaganda has penetrated the public sphere: very much in Bulgaria, very little in Belgium.
The last time I was in Sofia, a couple of months ago, I switched on my TV to see, to my surprise, the Russian TV1 channel churning out propaganda talk shows. Many Bulgarians understand Russian, and apparently, many are tuning in.
But as I continued scrolling the channels, I saw the TV channel of BSP, where a TV anchor – who was also an MP – was repeating the messages of Russian propagandists in the Bulgarian language.
Bulgaria has a widespread view that “we should hear all opinions”.
Why does Bulgaria have the lowest percentage of people vaccinated against COVID (and one of the highest registered death rates)?
It is because mainstream TV channels gave equal space to scientists who said people should get the vaccine and to charlatan anti-vaxxers.
Whereas, in truth, you cannot give equal space to scientists and charlatans. They never did that on Belgian or French TV, but they do in Bulgaria.
It’s not by chance that the pro-Russian party Vazrazhdane earlier banked on the anti-vaxxers to gather strength, and now that the anti-vaxxer rhetoric no longer matters, it has become openly pro-Russian.
But a bigger reason Russian propaganda feels at home in Bulgaria is that Bulgarian media is generally not professional. There are many reasons for that. Oligarchy decides what Bulgarians should read and watch, and we do not even know who these oligarchs are because there is no transparency about media ownership.
Media literacy (or illiteracy) is also part of the problem. I have seen on Facebook links to fake news disseminated by professional journalists. When I asked one of my colleagues why she was doing that, she replied, “because it’s interesting.”
This essentially means that mainstream media are churning out infotainment, not information.
That said, media freedom in Bulgaria does exist – but only in small media outlets that struggle to survive.
When foreign students asked me why Bulgarian media are so bad, I said this was because we have a bigger problem with democracy.
It’s because we don’t have the rule of law – instead, we have the rule of the oligarchs, of the mafia. And the mafia controls political life, making sure there is no reform.
In 12 years of Boyko Borissov’s rule, there has been no reform at all, not the slightest attempt to change anything, I said, in gross violation of reflection day.
The next day, Borissov emerged as the relative winner of the elections, and it was not a surprise. Whether he’ll be able to form a viable government is another matter.
This article was published on Euractiv on 03 October 2022.
