The Foreign Minister of Bulgaria, Velislava Petrova-Chamova, said in exclusive comments to Euronews that the reason her government worked vociferously to remove the head of Russia’s Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, from the European Commission’s proposed 21st package of sanctions against Russia was to avoid fuelling EU scepticism.
“When you have sanctions that have purely symbolic measure but no economic consequence on Russia, what you are risking is that, in a country – an Eastern Orthodox country, such as Bulgaria – is creating the environment for brewing anti-European rhetoric,” she said.
