Rumen Radev
Rumen Radev has been president of Bulgaria since January 2017, the fighter pilot and air force commander who resigned his command in 2016 over the government's refusal to buy new aircraft, ran as an independent with the Socialists' backing, and beat Borisov's candidate in the run-off of November 2016 by eighteen points. That brought Borisov's resignation the next day. He was re-elected in 2021 in the first round with two-thirds of the vote after the protests of 2020, in which he had stood with the crowds and called the government a mafia. The presidency is weak in the constitution and he has used what it has, the veto, the caretaker governments he appointed five times between 2021 and 2023 when no parliament could form one, and the podium. From it he has said that Crimea is Russian, that Bulgaria should not send Ukraine weapons and that the sanctions hurt Bulgaria more than Russia, positions a majority of the country shares and the governments have not. The parliament sent the weapons and the president signed the appointments and the country did both. He was born in Dimitrovgrad in 1963, went through the air force academy at Dolna Mitropoliya, flew MiG-29s, and trained at the Squadron Officer School in Alabama and took a master's at the Air War College there in 2003. He commanded the Graf Ignatievo air base and, from 2014, the air force as a major-general. The Petkov government of 2021-22, which came out of the party his caretaker ministers had founded, was the closest he came to a government of his own, and it lasted seven months. The party, We Continue the Change, then went its own way. His approval has stayed the highest of any politician's through the seven elections, and the question of the second term's end in January 2027 is whether he founds a party, which the constitution forbids him while in office and which the polls say would win. He has said he will decide in time. He has said the euro's adoption in January 2026 was rushed against the people's will, which the Zhelyazkov government's fall in December 2025 gave him the occasion to repeat.
- Lived: 1963 CE – ?
- Nationality: Bulgarian
- Roles: president, general, politician
