The docks of the oil terminal extend just a few meters from the Bulgarian coast towards the Black Sea. For 25 years, the Russian crude oil they received fueled an extensive network of economic and political influence that helped keep Bulgaria closely tied to the Kremlin.
How much oil arrived at the terminal to be used by a nearby Russian-owned refinery was something only the Russians knew: they controlled the docks, meters recorded the volumes delivered, and security forces monitored the perimeter fences.
However, in recent months Russia has been losing control over the Rosenets oil terminal, near the Black Sea port city of Burgas.
Bulgaria has regained control of the docks and has drawn up plans to take over management of the refinery from its Russian owner, Lukoil, if it resists processing non-Russian oil. In January, Bulgaria suspended shipments of Russian crude oil.
Russia’s increasing loss of control of the facility highlights an unintended (and, for Moscow, undesirable) consequence of its invasion of Ukraine.
As Russia fights militarily to secure its occupation of territory seized from Ukraine across the Black Sea, Moscow has suffered setbacks on previously friendly ground in Bulgaria. Long linked to Russia by history, their common Slavic roots and a shared Orthodox Christian faith, Bulgaria was once so loyal to the Kremlin that it asked to be absorbed into the Soviet Union.
Past loyalty has now turned into deep distrust of Russia among the country’s main political parties over the war in Ukraine. When Russia invaded, Bulgaria’s government was dominated by pro-Western reformers and took a hard line against Moscow, expelling 70 Russian diplomats over espionage concerns and arresting several Bulgarian officials suspected of spying for Moscow.
That government, led by Kiril Petkov, collapsed a few months later, but rival parties have often taken an even harder line, except for one far-right ultranationalist group.
Bulgaria, which before the war in Ukraine depended on Russia for about 95 percent of its natural gas, now imports no Russian gas. It also abandoned Rosatom, the Russian nuclear energy company and long-standing partner, in favor of the American Westinghouse for its supply of nuclear fuel and the construction of new reactors.
“We need to be 100 percent independent of Russia on energy,” said Nikolai Denkov, who, before resigning this month as prime minister, oversaw a campaign to break Lukoil’s control over the oil terminal and nearby Neftohim refinery. “Everyone knows that Lukoil is ultimately controlled by the Kremlin.”
Lukoil denies this, insisting it is a private company focused on business. But the company, which produces almost all of Bulgaria’s gasoline and jet fuel at its Neftohim refinery, operates 220 gas stations in the country and has become the most visible emblem of what many see as Russia’s malign influence on Bulgaria, the poorest country in the European Union. Union.
“Remove Lukoil from the equation and Russia’s influence in Bulgaria will crumble,” said Ilian Vassilev, a former ambassador to Moscow.
Lukoil, complaining of “unfair and biased political decisions” against its business, announced in December that it was reviewing its strategy in Bulgaria with a view perhaps to selling the Neftohim refinery.
The unraveling of a once intimate relationship by authorities in Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, has caused unrest on the Black Sea coast, where Russians were long a mainstay of the tourism and real estate sectors, but now they mostly stay away. Lukoil is the area’s largest employer, with more than 5,000 people relying on work at its refinery, oil terminal and related companies, according to Dimitar Nikolov, mayor of Burgas.
“Every family in Burgas has a relative who once worked at the refinery,” Nikolov said. He said he didn’t care whether Russia maintains ownership of the refinery or sells it as long as it continues to work and pay salaries, and continues to fund the city’s volleyball club, a frequent national champion, and other goodwill investments.
The Russia Center, a private visa agency in the city whose main business used to be helping Russians obtain residence permits, still flies a Russian flag at the entrance. But, fearful of upsetting Ukrainians and other Russian-speaking customers, it now needs to make up for a drop in business from Russia by also displaying a digital sign that reads: “No to war!”
The manager, Plamen Dotor, said Russians are still welcome in Bulgaria, “but now it is difficult for them because of geopolitics” and the cancellation of many of their visas and what, before the war, were at least four daily flights between Russia and Russia. Burgas and Russia.
Few ordinary Bulgarians express hostility toward Russia, but according to a recent opinion poll, only 20 percent approve of Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, compared with 58 percent before he invaded Ukraine. Bulgaria’s rebellious politicians, so deeply divided and unable to cooperate that five general elections have been held since 2021, have found rare common cause against Russia and Lukoil.
“Lukoil’s influence here has been enormous and very bad,” said Delyan Dobrev, chairman of the Bulgarian parliament’s energy committee. “We have to do everything possible to show that they are not wanted here. We don’t want Lukoil,” he said.
When the European Union banned sea transfers of Russian crude in June 2022, the Bulgarian government requested an exemption, saying the end of shipments would cripple its largest industrial enterprise, the Lukoil-owned refinery that only uses Russian crude, and send gasoline. prices skyrocket. To avoid this, Bulgaria secured the right to circumvent the ban imposed by the EU until the end of this year.
But, in a sign of the extent to which the war in Ukraine has shifted Bulgaria’s political winds against Russia, the government at the time – led by Petkov’s pro-Western party, We Continue the Change – found itself under intense fire from Moscow. friendly political forces.
The party’s enemies accused him of aiding Russia and its war by pushing for the exemption and delaying ending it, even as evidence emerged that Lukoil was exploiting the loophole to ship Russian oil beyond Bulgaria.
“They brag all the time about being the West’s biggest allies in Bulgaria, but they wanted to keep the Russian oil flowing,” said Dobrev, whose own party, GERB, used to pride itself on having good relations with Russia and its energy companies.
GERB leader, former Prime Minister Boyko Borissov, joined Putin in Turkey in 2020 to celebrate the opening of Turkstream, a pipeline that allowed Russian energy giant Gazprom to bypass Ukraine and make deliveries through Bulgaria to Serbia, Hungary and Bosnia.
In a 2006 cable to Washington leaked by WikiLeaks, then-U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria John R. Beyrle said that Borisov, who at the time was mayor of Sofia, “has close financial and political ties” to the former president. from Lukoil. Bulgaria’s head Valentin Zlatev is described as a “kingmaker” and a “power broker”. Zlatev has since left Lukoil.
“We have tamed the dragon, but we have not killed it,” said Martin Vladimirov, director of the energy and climate program at the Center for the Study of Democracy in Sofia. Gaining control of the Lukoil refinery is vital not only for energy security, he added, but also for the future health of a political system warped for years by “the cancer of Russian money.”
“The only way to completely disengage from Russia,” he said, “is to expel Lukoil.”
According to the mayor of Burgas, most of the refinery’s more than 100 Russian managers have already gone home.
Since January, the facility has had to use non-Russian oil and drastically reduce production. Lukoil rejected a request to visit the refinery.
When Lukoil took control of the Bulgarian state refinery in 1999 in a privatization deal tainted by corruption allegations, the arrival of a deep-pocketed Russian oil company “didn’t seem like a bad idea,” recalled Dimitar Naydenov, a pro-Member of the Western Parliament of Burgas. “But back then we were dealing with a different Russia. “Russia has changed and we have to stop it from exporting fear and corruption along with its oil.”
Boriana Dzhambazova contributed reporting from Sofia, Bulgaria.