- The caretaker prime minister was left without his foreign policy adviser, but apparently heeded her advice to find experienced diplomats for the elections
- Ivan Kondov and Svetlan Stoev take over the coordination between our embassies abroad
Acting Prime Minister Dimitar Glavchev was left without a foreign policy adviser in the person of Meglena Plugchieva on the day he officially took office as foreign minister.
Plugchieva submitted her surprising resignation on Tuesday morning. Among the reasons for the decision, she indicated “disagreement with the policy led by the Prime Minister”. She was not available for comment throughout the day. That is why there were unofficial versions that she did not agree with the prime minister combining the post with that of foreign minister. In previous television appearances, Plugchieva explained several times that there are enough professional diplomats to coordinate the work of our embassies around the world during the elections.
Plugchieva, who is a former ambassador to Germany, Switzerland and Montenegro, publicly announced a few days ago that she has no ambitions for the post of foreign minister, because she accepts these 3 diplomatic mandates of hers as political.
Apart from the official confirmation by the Council of Ministers about the submitted resignation, there were no comments either.
Unofficially, sources from the caretaker government shared that Prime Minister Glavchev values all his advisers, whom he personally invited, but expects them to give advice when he asks for them.
Tuesday’s new foreign ministry appointments, however, showed that the acting prime minister has heeded Plugchieva’s advice. He managed to find two experienced diplomats to organize the elections abroad. This was also the public concern of Plugchieva herself – that there is no good team in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to prepare the two votes for the June 9 early parliamentary and regular European vote.
Having clearly listened to precisely these advices even after taking office, Glavchev decided to appoint another deputy – the former permanent secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ivan Kondov. He was the person who, together with the Bulgarian ambassador to Azerbaijan, Kalin Anastasov, successfully organized the elections abroad in the last 4 years. The two usually lead the special group “Elections” in the ministry, which conducts talks with the CEC, takes care of securing members in the commissions in abroad etc.
Kondov has been the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs since 2021. In a month at the end of Galab Donev’s second office, Donev became the Minister of Foreign Affairs, after the then first diplomat Nikolay Milkov left as Bulgaria’s ambassador to NATO. So it was Kondov who handed over the position of foreign minister to Maria Gabriel. He then returned to his post as Permanent Secretary.
Svetlan Stoev, who will now occupy the position of permanent secretary, was the ambassador of Bulgaria to Denmark until recently. After him, the former Minister of Defense and adviser to Prime Minister Denkov Dragomir Zakov took over the mission. Stoev was also the head of our embassies in Sweden and Germany. And in the two official offices of Stefan Yanev, he was the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Until now, Glavchev had appointed as deputy minister in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs the former royal deputy Maria Angelieva and colonel Nevyana Miteva, promoted to vice president by Prof. Anastas Gerdzhikov from GERB in 2021. Both of them do not have much experience in foreign policy. “24 hours ago” experts commented that this problem can be solved by appointing more deputy ministers. There can be four of them in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – this was the case with Ekaterina Zaharieva in Borisov’s third cabinet.
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