The Duran Podcast - Radev Wins Bulgaria Elections, Can He Challenge EU Control?

Episode Date: April 21, 2026

Radev Wins Bulgaria Elections, Can He Challenge EU Control?

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the elections in Bulgaria, which saw Radov win a landslide victory. He will not need a coalition to govern. He won a majority in the elections. He's often described by the EU globalists as being pro-Russian, but I have not seen any indications that he's particularly pro-Russian. I see Radeva as being very rational and pragmatic in that he understands that Bulgaria just cannot shuffle money into project Ukraine, just keep on giving money away to Zelensky and not have that money be accounted for. And he also understands that there's going to be a very, very big catastrophic energy crisis that is going to hit Europe and is going to hit Europe very soon. he is calling for dialogue between Europe and Russia, Bulgaria and Russia, because he understands that when it comes to energy, Russia is going to be the only game in town given everything

that is happening in the Middle East. So we have a majority government now, or a majority government that will take power soon in Bulgaria. We have a leader who was acting as president. And now he's going to be acting as prime minister, a fighter pilot, and someone who could push to restore relations with Russia, or at least to better relations with Russia between Bulgaria. So what are your thoughts with Radiv and these elections in Bulgaria? Well, the first thing I should say is that Bulgaria happens to be a country I know quite well. I've been there.

I've got family connections there. So it's a place that I'm familiar with. Now, Radiv won big, very big. I mean, this is unusual the scale of his victory. And I have to say this, I could see it coming for some time. If you know Bulgaria, you will know certain things about the country. You will know that obviously it's a Slav or. a Orthodox country, a little like Serbia in some respects.

They're very different in others. It does not have the kind of hostility to Russia that you find in some other places. It leans to the left, or at least a critical mass of people in Bulgaria, lean to the left on economic issues and at the same time, are rather conservative on what you might call social issues. They dislike corruption. Everybody dislikes corruption, at least in theory. And Bulgaria has been ruled for a significant amount of time

by a small oligarchy, by an oligarchy of parties that have both been extremely pro-EU. massively supportive of integrationist policies within the EU, and which have also been extremely corrupt where there's been a great deal of corruption. So it was inevitable that sooner or later there would be a major backlash against this, and that there would be a big victory for a political movement and a president, a president who's well-known in Bulgaria. Radif has been in politics in Bulgaria for quite a long time. He's been president of Bulgaria. So he's well-known to the Bulgarian people. Anyway, it's unsurprising that there would be a big victory eventually for a

political movement that mirrors the sentiments of the Bulgarian movement. people, on economics, on social issues, that is not actively anti-Russian in the way that, I mean, people in Bulgaria don't like, which is the previous leadership was, and which is nationalist at the same time. So this was sooner or later going to happen. And exactly as you say, Radif is not pro-Russian. He is in no conceivable sense, an agent of Moscow or anything of that kind. He is somebody who wants to pursue a Bulgaria-first policy, a policy that is focused on Bulgarian needs, especially corruption, but also economics and many other things. And that aligns him very closely with another political leader and another political movement.

movement in Eastern Europe, which is FITZO and his movement in Slovakia. That is also left-wing in terms of economic policy, conservative on social questions, nationalist, and in no sense anti-Russian. So this is developing as a kind of trend in Eastern Europe. And by the way, it distinguishes FITZO and Radev. from someone like Orban, Orban was conservative on social questions, by no means anti-Russian, as we know, a Hungarian nationalist, but he was a politician of the right. Radev and Fizzo come from what you might call the traditional left in this part of Eastern Europe.

Okay, so how will the EU react to this? Well, they will be absolutely furious about this, because from their point, view, all these nuances, the fact that, as I said, he's a Bulgarian patriot, not a Russian stooge, that doesn't interest them. From Brussels' point of view, you do not want independent-minded political leaders come into power, especially in countries like Eastern European countries like Bulgaria, Slovakia, or wherever. You want people who are totally loyal to you and who will automatically and invariably follow the line that Brussels sets. And the previous governments in Bulgaria did that, and they were very corrupt,

and that didn't worry the EU at all. With Radif, of course, now they have somebody who has probably the integrity and the force of personality and the political beliefs to follow a, different line. So they're going to do everything they possibly can to undermine him, as they've done with Fizzo, as they successfully did with Orban. So we have a battle on our hands in Bulgaria. And of course, they have the tools. Bulgaria disastrously joined the euro just a few months ago, barely discussed inside Bulgaria. It was something that the political class basically imposed on Bulgaria without any proper consultation, without any proper discussion. Slovakia, by the

way, is also within the Eurozone. We know the enormous power that that gives to Brussels, to the EU centre. And Bulgaria, because it's a poorer country than Slovakia, with an economy that has been less well run than Slovakia has been, is going to be much more vulnerable. to the kind of pressures that the EU centre is going to impose, and they will impose those pressures. Now, the one thing I would say, the thing that works in Radeus' favour is that he is, as I said, a man of integrity from all accounts, and that is one of the reasons where he has been politically so successful. And you could argue that with this major crisis in energy markets, in all of this, he now is working with the tide in the sense that what he is saying is increasingly being said by

others across the EU, by Salvini in Italy, by obviously Le Pen and Baddela in France, by increasing numbers of people in Germany, including people who are beyond the IFTA, the minister-president of Saxony, for example, said it's time to sort out relations with the Russians. But de Vava, the prime minister of Belgium, said the same thing. So you could argue that there is a trend in Europe now to sort of question the orthodoxes, the political and economic and social and foreign policy, orthodoxes of the EU centre, of Ursula and Kallas, and even Mawar in Hungary, has been talking some of the same rhetoric. But I have to say that based on everything that's happened, based on experience, I think that

for the moment at least, the EU centre retains overall control and the pressure will be on Radef more than it will be on them. Yeah, Uradd is not going to have much space to affect any real changes. The fact that they're locked into the euro already puts them in a weaker position in our bond. Well, why do you think they were locked into the euro? And they still held money from Arban. I know, exactly. Why do you think Bulgaria was dragooned into the euro?

There was no great popular. There was no great desire for it in Bulgaria. It was not widely discussed. There was no votes. There was no referendum. It was not part of any parliamentary or political agenda. It was not fought over in an election, a parliamentary election or a presidential election

or a referendum or anything of that kind. It was all smuggled in through the back door, precisely because everybody could see, everybody in Brussels and in Sofia could see that sooner or later, sooner rather than later, Radef and the movement that has now won the election would come into control. And of course, control is what the EU is all about.

They've made absolutely sure that he is not in control because if you don't run your currency, you don't run your economy, if you don't run your economy, you don't run your country. To some extent, Feet Soen's in a better position because Slovakia has been run,

partly by him, by the way, for over many, many years, and he's pursued a very successful, very conservative fiscal policy. Bulgaria is not in that position. I mean, you have two small countries now. Hungary is out. Magyar is going to fold very nicely with the Ursula crowd. So now you have two countries which are, which you could say are going to provide pushback to Ursula,

Slovakia and Bulgaria. Yes. So Hungary, Hungary is out. Bulgaria is now part of that grouping, the two country grouping. That's it. That's it. Absolutely. Absolutely.

And as I said, very precarious in both places. I mean, if you know the history of both countries, if you know the culture of both countries, as I say, Slav, conservative on social questions, left. wing on economic issues. Then, as I said, it's not surprising. Neither country, neither population has any history of being anti-Russian. In the case of Bulgaria, Bulgaria was liberated from the Ottomans by the Russians. And in the case of Slovakia, well, it's a more complex story, but again, the Slovaks have generally gone well with the Russians. So there's nothing that.

But ultimately, they're two small places. They're not going to stop by themselves, the EU juggernaut. If there's a major change in one of the big countries in Italy or France or Germany, especially in Germany, well, then we're in a different position. But that's not happened. And it may never do. Well, the EU juggernaut tomorrow, I believe, is going to green light, to the 90 billion loan.

Yeah. To Zelensky. The loan with zero interest and doesn't need to be paid back. It's going to be given to Zelensky at a time, at a time when you're going to have incredible economic difficulties in the European Union. They're just going to hand over 90 billion to Zelensky. 60 of that billion is going to flow right back into the pockets of the military companies. 30 billion of that 90 is going to fold into the.

into the pockets of Zelensky, 10% for the big guy, for the big guy. 10% for the big guy is. I don't know if that is anymore. Or the big girl. I don't know. But anyway, that's right. I mean, that is the situation. Nothing's stopping them.

No, nothing's going to stop them. And certainly a little matter of an election in Bulgaria isn't going to stop them in the slightest. War with Russia is the trajectory. Germany, Germany, they keep on putting articles out. there. And I'm going to give you a little bit of pushback because you make the point about Germany's industrial position. It's deindustrialization. It's economic position. It's energy position and how is it going to be able to make all the weapons, the fact that it hasn't been able to make

weapons, which is proven correct. But every article that is coming out now from every publication, I believe yesterday was the Wall Street Journal, I want to say. Once again, talks about how Germany is going to focus on military. That's all it has left. We've been saying this for a while now, actually. We've been saying this for three years, that Germany, it's not going to have any industry going forward. And all is going to have left is going to be the military. And sure enough, what we predicted three years ago is coming to pass, almost exactly to pass.

But Germany militarizing, the automobile industry is going to be transitioned to military factories, to make tanks, to make weapons. But the big push across all of Europe, and we've talked about this before in a video, is drones. Lots of drones. They're going to manufacture drones. Even Lovov said last week that Europe is militarizing rapidly. I mean, he showed concern about what they're doing. Yes. What do you make of all this?

I absolutely hold to my position. The idea that you can simply convert car factories, Volkswagen factories and Daimler-Benz factories and get them to build armoured vehicles, people who talk in this way, again, are not people with experience of industry. I have some experience of industry. I speak a lot to engineers.

What is being proposed is, is, I'm not saying it is impossible, but it is incredibly difficult to do. And it would take a huge amount of time and investment to completely reorganize factories in that way. And you're probably looking at a 10-year, at a 10-year timeline at best to do it so that you start producing armored vehicles in any serious way. I mean, armored vehicles and passenger cars are completely different things. And what that is going to do is it's going to divert investment away in Germany from where it's needed in productive parts of the economy. It's going to eventually lead to Germany running a trade deficit, which is the thing to always understand. Because if you go in for military

production or try to go, you're obviously not producing civilian goods. So you have to import them. And Germany has not had to import civilian goods to any great extent up to now because it has run effective exports of civilian goods instead. So you're going to have a situation where Germany, at some point in the next five years, it's going to be as soon as that, it's going to start running a trade, a budget, a trade deficit. When you have a trade deficit, that in turn will lead to an end. widening budget deficit because Germany's credit is so good, it still remains good. They're going to run up lots and lots of debt. What you're going to get in a few years time, 10 years time, is a Germany that is very heavily indebted, well over 100% debt to GDP ratio, like all the other places, a perennial budget deficit,

a structural trade deficit, intensifying deindustrialization, increasing trend to fall behind in high technologies, just to say. And in terms of the heavy weapons, the tanks, the armored vehicles, the guns, actually very few of those. because it's not going to work out at all in the way that people suppose. It's just not going to, it cannot happen in the kind of way that it's being done now. This, as I said this before, this is Friedrich Merz, BlackRock, debt, financial leverage. You're getting all of these articles planted in the media to get this ball rolling. but it will never reach the destination that people say. You would need an economic revolution, not just in Germany, but across Europe to achieve it.

And that isn't going to happen. But of course, what you can do, because they're cheap and relatively easy to make, and they're now the weapon of, you know, everybody talks about, you're going to make lots and lots and lots of drums. You're going to make drones? you're going to initially import the spare parts from China. You're then going to try and make those drones yourself using German equipment and German things. And that will be prohibitively expensive.

And again, like the German attempt to create batteries and solar panels and all of that kind of thing, it's going to be entirely non-cost effective to do it. in Germany as well, and at that point it will fail. That's my prediction. What I will say about it is this, on the German economy, who has been right? Right. Why is Lavrov concerned? Well, you know, the Russians obviously are always going to be nervous about any talk

about German rearmament, because after all, they fought the Germans through two world wars. I'm going to say something else. I would suspect that the Russians haven't interested play this up, because it's not just the Russians who are going to be nervous about signs of German rearmament. Many people in Germany, by the way, are nervous about German rearmament. Some of them, because they understand the economics of it, which are the ones that I've discussed. So Lavrov is relaying that. And he's also relaying to people in Germany, you really want to get into an arms race with us and into another potential conflict with us. So there's that. Of course, at the same time,

it has a domestic aspect because it further consolidates opinion in Russia at a time, and this is a topic for another day, at a time when we're starting to see the Russians becoming increasingly assertive about the Baltic states. and they've been making more comments about the Baltic states, about a whole range of other topics as well. So it makes sense for the Russians to talk in this way. Of course, to what extent Lovrolf understands all of these details about the German economy? I mean, he's not remember in charge of the economy in Russia or the economy in Germany. To what extent he knows the details.

I am not sure. I have followed the German economy since the 70s, and I'm confident in what I'm saying. Okay. Good luck to Radov, and let's see how he does. Absolutely. All right. The durand.com. We're on X and Rumble and Telegram.

Also on substack. Go to the Duran shop, pick up some merch. there is a link in the description box down below. Take care.