Bulgaria is an important supplier of ammunition and explosives to Ukraine, through third countries, especially neighbouring Romania. <\/p>\n
The war has given a boost to an arms industry which has struggled since the Soviet era. <\/p>\n
Since 2022, Radev has frequently spoken out against the sale of the Bulgarian stockpile of Soviet era weapons to Ukraine, on the grounds that they prolong a war Ukraine cannot win – a similar argument to that made by outgoing Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban.<\/p>\n
The VMZ factory in Sopot, two hours drive east of the Bulgarian capital Sofia, produces explosives and NATO-grade 155 mm artillery shells. <\/p>\n
In October 2025, the German arms company Rheinmetall announced a \u20ac1bn joint venture with VMZ, to produce up to 100,000 155mm shells a year. <\/p>\n
A separate gunpowder factory will also be built in Sopot. Rheinmetall will have a 51% share in the company. <\/p>\n
Production will be part of efforts across Europe to scale up military production.<\/p>\n
While he opposes military supplies to Ukraine, Radev took credit for inviting the CEO of Rheinmetall, Armin Papperger to Bulgaria in March 2025.<\/p>\n
“Bulgaria is becoming part of the European defence ecosystem,” Radev said, on a visit to the Rheinmetall headquarters in Unterluss, Germany, in August 2025.<\/p>\n
His position, as head of government, seems likely to be similar to that of Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico – critical of EU support, but not imposing a veto on the manufacture of arms by private companies for Ukraine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bulgaria is an important supplier of ammunition and explosives to Ukraine, through third countries, especially neighbouring Romania. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-540481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}