92 524
Ibid. 525
U.S.
Department of State, Background Information on Bulgaria for Committee Staff, Feb.
9, 2017.
526
Ibid. 527
Ibid. 528
Eric Schmitt, US. Troops Train in Eastern Europe to Echoes of the Cold War
The New York Times, Aug. 6, 2017. Nick Thorpe, ‘‘Bulgaria’s Military Warned of Soviet-Era Catastrophe
BBC News, Oct. 14,
2014. John R. Haines,
The Suffocating Symbiosis Russia Seeks Trojan Horses Inside Fractious Bulgaria’s Political Corral, Foreign Policy Research Institute, Aug. 5, 2016 (citing a November
2006 interview with Kapital, a Bulgarian language weekly business newspaper. Ina public opinion poll conducted by the European Commission in 2016, 49 percent of Bulgarian citizens expressed trust in the EU, a rate higher than several other countries across Western Europe. European Commission, Directorate-General
for Communication, Standard
Eurobarometer 86: Public opinion in the European Union, Nov. 2016, at 93. month. Proynov claims that in 2011, GERB, then Bulgaria s ruling party, and the police cooked up criminal charges against him (for the illegal possession of antiquities, weapons and narcotics) to silence his criticism of their policies.
524
This mutually beneficial propaganda loop is in some respects more powerful and more difficult to counter than Moscow-gen- erated propaganda on its own. Despite the lukewarm support for NATO within the general population, Bulgaria should be lauded for its active role in the Alliance. It deployed troops and suffered casualties in the NATO-led missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
525
According to the US.
State Department, the US. Department of Defense is funding increased exercises and training at four joint U.S.-Bulgarian military facili- ties.
526
In September 2016, the United States and Bulgaria conducted a NATO Joint Enhanced Air Policing (EAP) Mission, the first of its kind in the country.
527
And in 2017, Bulgaria co-hosted the Saber Guardian exercise, the largest US. and NATO exercise in Europe of the year.
528
Bulgaria’s active role in NATO, however, remains somewhat hampered by the country’s continued reliance on Russian-made military equipment, a legacy of the Warsaw Pact. In particular, Bulgarian government officials have expressed concern about the country’s Soviet-era air defense systems as well as ongoing maintenance of equipment across the armed forces.
529
In light of the Counteracting America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) that mandates sanctions on those who conduct significant transactions with the Russian defense and intelligence sectors, the Bulgarian government should be working with urgency to diminish its reliance on Russian arms.
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