Bulgaria badly affected by anti-Russia bans

Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borisov says his country’s economy is badly suffering by the European Union’s sanctions against Russia.

Borisov said in a press conference in the EU’s de facto capital, Brussels, on Thursday that Bulgaria is “affected severely” by the recently imposed bans against Russia over the crisis in Ukraine.

The Bulgarian prime minister further said he hoped the punitive measures had “already played their role and relations will be soon normalized,” adding that even before the anti-Moscow bans, Sofia was struggling to revive economic growth while tackling a bank crisis in the country.

“Bulgaria is facing not only political and economic and financial problems, we are facing global problems and that is why we need serious support,” said Borisov.

According to figures by the EU statistics office Eurostat, Bulgaria’s exports to Russia declined by 22 percent in August from a year earlier compared to an 18 percent fall in the overall EU exports to Russia.

Bulgaria along with other EU members such as Hungary and Slovakia have reluctantly gone along with the bloc’s bans applied on Russia after Ukraine’s Black Sea peninsula of Crimea rejoined the Russian federation following a referendum in March.

The EU and other Western states have targeted Russia’s financial and energy sectors and put a number of Russian nationals close to President Vladimir Putin on its sanctions list.

In a tit-for-tat measure, Moscow also imposed year-long food bans on the United States, the EU, Australia, Canada and Norway in August.

The West accuses Moscow of having a hand in the crisis in eastern Ukraine, which erupted when Kiev launched military operations in April to silence pro-Russia protests. However, the Kremlin denies the accusation.