Bulgaria pro-Moscow president re-elected, urges Russia talks

With ballots counted from all polling stations, the Central Election Commission reported that Iotova and her running mate, Kiril Valchev, won 57.57% of the vote in the 1 November runoff. Gyurov, whom she had appointed caretaker prime minister in February and who signed a ten-year security pact with Kyiv a month later, took 39.48%. Only a week earlier, fewer than three percentage points had separated the two candidates. Exit polls put runoff turnout at 27% to 29%.

Iotova, a 62-year-old former television journalist and member of the European Parliament, served for nine years as Rumen Radev’s vice-president before succeeding him on 23 January, when he resigned to run for parliament. Now prime minister, Radev backed her campaign after his Progressive Bulgaria party won 131 of the legislature’s 240 seats in April.

Drone strikes on merchant ships off Bulgaria’s coast brought the war to the centre of the candidates’ only televised debate. Iotova, who supports Bulgaria’s EU and NATO membership, called on all six Black Sea coastal states, including Russia and Ukraine, to negotiate a halt to hostilities at sea. Gyurov countered that calling for a truce offered little protection against the next attack.

As president, Iotova serves as commander-in-chief and chairs the Consultative Council on National Security, while Radev’s cabinet directs foreign policy. Although his government halted weapons donations to Ukraine from Bulgarian military stocks in June, Radev told parliament in October that he would maintain the security pact Gyurov had signed with Kyiv.