At the end of last week the President of the National Assembly Dimitar Glavchev received, from the local authorities and members of the Bulgarian community in the town of Primorsk, assurances that the new education law in Ukraine will not affect the rights of the Bulgarian minority to study their mother tongue. Before Glavchev, the same assurances were given to Prime Minister Boyko Borissov and Foreign Minister Ekaterina Zaharieva by Ukraine’s ambassador to Sofia Mykola Baltazhy. Guarantees that the right of ethnic Bulgarians in Ukraine to mother-tongue study will not be infringed upon by the education reform in the country were also given by President Petro Poroshenko at a meeting in New York with Bulgaria’s President Rumen Radev.

That this issue was raised so many times in the second half of September is indicative enough of how much it is worrying Sofia. At this stage there are no signs that Ukraine’s reactions have not been satisfactory, nor is a sharp response expected, as was the case in Romania, for example, whose president called off the visit of the chairman of Ukrainian parliament to Bucharest in protest against the abolition of mother-tongue study for the minorities in Ukraine.

Even though Bulgaria’s reaction has been temperate, the feeling remains that Sofia will continue to carefully follow developments, because this issue is just one of the things that have been worrying our compatriots in Ukraine ever since the start of the conflict with Russia. Traditionally, the Bulgarian diaspora in Ukraine has not had any problems, and in numerous official contacts, Sofia has acknowledged this and expressed its appreciation.

However in March 2014, PM Oresharski’s security council speculated that in the event of an armed conflict or if xenophobic sentiments in Ukraine were to rise, 250,000 – 300,000 ethnic Bulgarians may head towards Bulgaria. In connection with the conflict situation, at the beginning of 2015, the embassy in Kiev and the consulate-general in Odessa were instructed to facilitate the issuance of visas to ethnic Bulgarians from the areas of hostilities, while local authorities in Northeastern Bulgaria started preparations, at their own discretion, for taking in our compatriots. There never was a flow of ethnic Bulgarians from Ukraine into the country, yet in June this year, the fears of a rise in xenophobia were, in part, corroborated, when Ukrainian nationalists attacked a member of the community of Bessarabian Bulgarians in Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi. Nationalists organized a protest against this act in front of the Ukrainian embassy in Sofia. However, some of the participants in the protest wore ribbons of Saint George, carried Russian flags and at least one – a T-shirt with Russian President Vladimir Putin on it. This raised many doubts as to what motivated the participants and suspicions of involvement by a third party. The issue is a serious one, but it is also delicate, because there are ethnic Bulgarians, and quite a few of them, among the so-called “Russian separatists” in Ukraine.

It is difficult to say what Bulgaria’s next steps will be, but if the need arises, steps within the bounds of the EU are not to be ruled out. The question was already raised at an informal meeting of the EU foreign ministers. Bulgaria’s Foreign Minister Ekaterina Zaharieva announced that Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Greece, with the support of Poland, will release a joint letter to the foreign minister of Ukraine, the Council of Europe and the OSCE. Bulgaria heard the assurances given by Ukraine, yet obviously, the question remains an open one.

English version: Milena Daynova