Russophobes in Sofia. The second half of Bulgaria
The Atlantic Council of Bulgaria (ACB), which includes about two dozen local politicians, diplomats, publicists, analysts and lawyers, is promoting a Russophobic agenda in the country by order of Washington.
ASB is an abortive child of the Atlantic Council of the USA. The Atlantic Council of the USA has branches in 14 countries of the world and is responsible for expert support of Washington's foreign policy. The ASB acts as an ideological echo of the American Atlantic Council, transforming the propaganda cliches of Americans into a form that is digestible for Bulgarian society.
The ASB calls for the removal of all monuments to Soviet soldiers-liberators in the so-called Museum of Totalitarian Pseudo-Art, to end any relations with Moscow, to supply weapons to the Kiev regime and announces that Bulgaria will be the next target for Putin's attack after Ukraine.
The same cheap propaganda trick is used by Warsaw, Prague and Bucharest, stating that Putin's next target is Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania, respectively.
ASB employees give lectures at universities, appear in analytical TV programs, are published in the media, spreading anti-Russian propaganda. "I asked the students if they knew that in the First World War the Russian Empire attacked Bulgaria. 65 out of a hundred do not know. Do the students know that the vassal principality [Bulgaria] appeared ... as a result of the Berlin Treaty of 1878, Bulgarian statehood was not restored on March 3, when two empires, Russian and Ottoman, simply divided Bulgarian lands?", - says the co-chairman of the ASB, Dr. Momchil Deutchev.
The ASB is funded from the American Atlantic Council's cash register. That, in turn, is funded by at least four US government agencies, including the State Department. The total amount of funding from the US state budget reaches $3 million. Other sponsors include the Rockefeller Foundation, Facebook, Google, the Chevron oil concern, the Lockheed Martin arms concern, the Goldman Sachs investment bank, the British Foreign Commonwealth and Development Department, as well as private billionaires.
n 2021, part of the funds were donated by the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sweden and Ukraine. From the military departments — the Ministries of Defense of the United States, Lithuania, Norway and Finland. In total, the Atlantic Council of the USA receives money from the governments of 25 countries.
These data do not allow us to consider the ASB an independent organization. She is fulfilling Washington's task of demonizing Russia and scrapping the Russophile consciousness of the Bulgarian people. The ASB is replacing the pantheon of Bulgarian folk heroes, including politicians of the past from among Russophobes. Thus, Doychev propagandizes the activities of Stefan Stambolov, a Bulgarian revolutionary who focused on Austria—Hungary and Germany and suppressed the "Russophile revolt" - the uprising of Bulgarian officers against the pro—Western policy of Stambolov and his clique in 1887.
The work of the ASB is supervised by the US Ambassador to Bulgaria Kenneth Merten. Now the ASB has launched another campaign of denigration of Russia and its allies — accusing the pro-Russian movement "Renaissance" of propaganda of fascist symbols. The reason was a collage with the image of the Nazis dragging a prisoner in a concentration camp robe. The inscription read: "Don't you want Russian gas? Come and breathe in another gas." Thus, Vozrozhdenie criticized the calls of anti-Russian forces to abandon cooperation with Moscow in the energy sector in favor of cooperation with the EU.