APCs, vetoed by Bulgaria's president, were stored for 40 years, cannot be sent to front - expert 

He said this on the Espreso TV channel.

"We will survive this, to put it mildly, because the armoured personnel carriers, BTR-60 of the first modifications, are the oldest ones that can be seen on video. They have been standing for 40 years, stored in incomprehensible conditions, and not serviced. If we were to receive these armoured personnel carriers now, it would take us several months to put them in order. In fact, it is a peculiar detail of Bulgarian domestic life that they decided to give us old armoured personnel carriers that had been in police warehouses for 40 years, and another peculiarity is that the country's president decided to veto it," the expert said.

According to him, it is good that the Bulgarians do not cut off Ukraine's really important supply channels, such as 5V55K missiles for S-300 systems or fuel.

"As for the old armoured personnel carriers, they may at best be dismantled for spare parts, because they are old and difficult to use on the battlefield, but I think the Bulgarians will sort it out among themselves," Kyrychevskyi emphasises.

The expert recalled that Romania had also previously provided similar armoured personnel carriers, but they are used only by mobile groups of Shahed fighters of the National Guard of Ukraine, as they have poor performance in combat.

Bulgaria's military aid to Ukraine

On July 14, Bulgaria officially announced for the first time that it was going to donate heavy weapons to Ukraine. The military equipment was purchased 40 years ago to carry out the so-called revival process, an attempt by the totalitarian regime to forcibly assimilate Bulgarian Turks by changing their names, which led to the near expulsion of more than 300,000 Bulgarian citizens of Turkish origin to Turkey.

At its meeting on November 22, the National Assembly ratified an agreement between the Bulgarian Interior Ministry and the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine to provide Ukraine with decommissioned armoured vehicles.

Bulgarian President Rumen Radev returned the law on the ratification of the agreement on the free supply of armoured vehicles to Ukraine for a new discussion in parliament. Radev justified his decision by the fact that MPs were not sufficiently familiar with the specific parameters of the donation, making it impossible to objectively assess the need for the equipment.