On Sept. 19, 2024, the Valentino Danchev Foundation hosted former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov in Washington, D.C., for a fireside chat on malign Russian influence on Western democracies. The event drew prominent individuals from Washington foreign policy circles, members of the diplomatic corps, and regional, academic, and think-tank experts.
The founder of the Valentino Danchev Foundation, Kaloyan Valentinov Danchev, was born and raised in Bulgaria. While he has been based in Mexico for the last twenty years, Mr. Danchev’s entrepreneurial journey has taken him around the world, which has resulted in a deep appreciation of and iron-clad commitment to democracy, freedom, and transparency.
Unfortunately, Mr. Danchev’s home country of Bulgaria is threatened amid the influence that Russia continues to exert over the country and its current leadership, including attempts by the Kremlin to distance it politically and economically from European and transatlantic allies.
During the evening event, Secretary Pompeo and Prime Minister Petkov discussed how Russia’s tactics are impacting Bulgaria’s political landscape and what steps can be taken to safeguard democracy – not only in Bulgaria but across the globe. This important convening was only the beginning for the foundation of important long-term education and outreach programming that will advance democratic principles and ideals around the world.
The core mission of the Valentino Danchev Foundation is simple but vital: to ignite the spirit of democracy around the world. The foundation is working to enhance public understanding of institutions like NATO, to create opportunities for youth engagement in political processes, to support the free press, and, above all, to promote democratic values.
To learn more about the event, read the press release: https://www.danchevfoundation.org/post/valentino-danchev-foundation-launches-in-washington-with-fireside-chat-between-mike-pompeo-former
Transcript:
Valentino Danchev: Good evening, everyone. Secretary Pompeo, Prime Minister Petkov, and distinguished guests—on behalf of the Valentino Danchev Foundation, it’s a true honor to welcome you all to what promises to be a thought-provoking conversation on a topic that couldn’t be timelier: malign Russian influence in Bulgaria and Eastern Europe. For those who don’t know me, I’m Valentino Danchev. I was born and raised in Bulgaria, though I’ve been based in Mexico for the last 20 years. As a businessman, I have traveled the world, and I have a commitment to democracy, freedom, and transparency, which are at the core of everything I do.
I’m very honored to have the opportunity to introduce two remarkable leaders who will lead today’s discussion, and who have throughout their careers espoused the same values that we hold dear at the Valentino Danchev Foundation. First, we have former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. During his tenure as America’s top diplomat, Secretary Pompeo was instrumental in shaping U.S. foreign policy, renewing ties with America's key allies, and standing up to authoritarian regimes around the world.
Joining him is Kiril Petkov, former Prime Minister of Bulgaria and a Harvard-educated economist. Mr. Petkov led Bulgaria during one of its most politically tumultuous periods in recent history. He has bravely defended pro-Western democratic principles and worked tirelessly to curb corruption and hostile foreign interference in our home country.
I would also like to thank Dr. George Bogden, a fellow at Columbia School of Law, Rockefeller fellow at the Trilateral Commission, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, for moderating this important discussion. And of course, I want to extend a special thank you to the Vogel Group for hosting us in this beautiful space.
I’ve been living in Mexico for 20 years—obviously, I love Mexico, but I’m also Bulgarian, and I love Bulgaria. And I have four kids who are American, and I love America too. What I’ve been seeing in Bulgaria lately, especially in the past five or six years, is the growing influence of Russia. They are buying journalists, buying media, and buying time on all types of electronic media—TV, etc.—and pushing their propaganda and agenda little by little.
As someone who has been in sales for all of my life, I know that without follow-up, you lose everything you have. Follow-up is extremely important for sales—you need to follow up with your clients, with the training of your representatives, with everything. What we see in Europe, especially in Eastern Europe and Bulgaria, is a lack of follow-up from America. So, hopefully with a series of discussions and meetings like this, we can bring the spotlight of the U.S. onto what is happening in Bulgaria, and hopefully the U.S. will get more involved, follow up on its ally, and make sure things take the right direction.
Now, without any further delay, let me introduce Secretary Pompeo and Prime Minister Kiril Petkov.
Moderator: Mr. Danchev, thank you so much for that warm introduction. Of course, we're indebted to you and our hosts here at the Vogel Group for organizing this timely event. I understand both of our speakers have some opening remarks, so I’ll hand it over to Prime Minister Petkov.
Kiril Petkov: Thank you, everyone, for your time. First of all, thanks to everybody for taking the time. We just discussed with Mike Pompeo, and I’m thankful for his time, as well as for Valentino really putting this panel together.
First, I want to make an opening remark on why this panel is important for the U.S. Bulgaria is not a country that you hear very often about, but we do represent 40% of the ammunition that the Ukrainians are using in the war—40%. In the first few weeks, we were one of the few countries that really put forward ammunition support; we’re still a very significant part.
Secondly, Bulgaria is positioned geographically in such a way that, within a three- or four-year government term, we can connect the Mediterranean from Greece all the way to Ukraine, bypassing the strategic importance of the Black Sea. That would be a huge deal if the Russians do not have that as a point of control.
Third, what we can talk about today is not only Bulgaria. It’s about the Russian playbook in the region, which is being applied across different countries in what I call the logistics belt. If you look at Bulgaria, only last week, a pro-Russian party introduced the Foreign Agents Act—the same law that drew Georgia away from its European path. The same playbook is being applied to North Macedonia, Slovakia, and Hungary. While we’re all focused on our elections—whether European or U.S. elections—the Russians are not losing any time.
So unless we come together and realize that they have a coordinated strategy, and we need to have a coordinated strategy, it’s very hard to offset their moves. Panels like this one are key to exchanging ideas and realizing that we cannot face these problems country by country. We cannot talk about Georgia and then North Macedonia as though they’re not related—or Bulgaria, as we face our seventh election in three years.
So I hope this panel will be useful to you, as we can explain a little bit more on the inside strategies of what's happening in the Balkans and in Europe as a whole.
Mike Pompeo: Good evening, everyone. Thanks for having us here. I appreciate it very much.
Look, I was asked to be here because, frankly, for four years, we spent a disproportionate amount of time on this. For a nation with 7 million people or so, it occupied a central place in how we thought about the Balkans and Eastern Europe in particular, and certainly Europe more broadly. The Prime Minister spoke about treating these as one-offs. We did our best not to do that, although sometimes we struggled with it too.
We understood that you couldn't address these issues singularly. They had to be thought of systemically. How do you address these issues? The issues are broad. Certainly, there’s a media issue—Russian infiltration ensures that the people in these places don't get accurate information.
There's also an energy discussion to be had, which extends from Greece up and through the region. It’s about how to get gas and crude oil up and through without bad actors being able to interfere. And then finally, there’s the political angle. We see the Russian effort to stymie information flow, but also to disproportionately corrupt these systems.
It’s an effort to apply personal pressure on leaders who are stepping forward to deliver good outcomes for the people of Bulgaria and the region, and to do so not just with money, but with real political pressure too—to encourage them to behave in ways that are disconnected from what they know is best for the people of their country. This starts at the lowest levels of government and extends all the way up through the most important elections in Bulgaria.
We’ve seen this happen too many times in the region. If these places fall to Russian pressure, America will be worse off, Europe will be worse off, and the people that live in this place will be worse off too. The good news is, it’s not impossible to fix. These are achievable objectives. If we take a few simple actions, and if America and European leaders are prepared to lead, we’ll all be far better off in six months, a year, and five years from now. We won’t have the eighth, ninth, or tenth Bulgarian election ahead of us.
Moderator: Thank you so much, Mr. Secretary. I’ll offer a question now to Prime Minister Petkov. Bulgarians will be going to the polls for the seventh time in three years to elect a parliament. What is your plan to break this political deadlock, and what do you see as the solution to the ongoing crisis?
Kiril Petkov: Thank you for the question. Why is this happening? Why would we have a seventh election in three years? The answer is simple.
We have three groups in the current Bulgarian parliament. The first group is the pro-Russian parties. They are well-funded, they have a strong social media presence, and their Telegram channels are working like a machine. They are very organized. The second group of parties is the former transitional parties, which were really focused on corruption. The issue between these two groups is that they share the same morality. If you think about it, if you're one of those actors, it takes the same morality to deal with the Russians as to steal from your own people. So there’s coordination there based on shared interests.
The third group is what we call the pro-democratic, pro-reformist, anti-corruption parties. Unfortunately, right now, we are in the minority. We were able to gain access to power in the first election when we won—it was one of the few times in history when a party was just formed and suddenly won the elections.
But the machine was very well organized—all the media attacks, the hybrid attacks from the Russians. Of course, the Ukrainian war started. Our government took a strong stand. We said, "The Ukrainian war is our war. If we let Ukraine lose, who’s next? Moldova?" In Bulgaria, the monuments we have are not just from the past—these soldiers of the Soviet Army marched through our territories. So we took a strong stand. We sent stron
g support to Ukraine, in terms of ammunition, and we didn’t bow to the pressure the Russians put on us.
They said, "You guys are 95% dependent on Russian gas. If you don’t act with us and start paying in rubles, we’ll stop supplying you gas." And you can imagine, if you're a politician, and your industry is saying, "Do your geopolitical games, but we need gas to work our factories."
But I’m proud we said no. We said no to the Russians. We wouldn’t pay in rubles. Our contract was in U.S. dollars, and we continued to pay in U.S. dollars. They shut down the gas in 24 hours with only 17% storage in our gas reserves in Bulgaria.
And this is a lesson: one should never bow to blackmail, no matter how big the opponent. The Ukrainians showed it in a big way. But we also were the first country that had to face the ruble transaction issue. When we said no, they couldn’t believe it.
Within two weeks, we were able to get LNG. We coordinated with Greece and Turkey. Bulgaria never faced a day without gas for its industry, and the pricing didn’t increase. So a few months later, the Russians showed weakness. If they cannot put pressure on Bulgaria, one of the lower GDP per capita countries, what about the rest of Europe?
Coming to the election—Russia decided that this government had to go. They worked through social media and media channels, and suddenly we were the worst thing that had happened to Bulgaria and the region. We were called different names. At the peak, we had 1,000 articles per month against us. Somebody was paying for that.
One thing I’m proud of: we were the first country in Europe that sent 70 Russian GRU agents back home. I asked our security services, "How many embassy employees do we have in Sofia?" They said 118. I asked, "118 full-time employees? What the hell are they doing here?" They said some of them were working for FSB and GRU. I said, "Give me the full list." I sent 70 of them home.
I received a call from the ambassador. She said, "You have 24 hours to reconsider, or I’ll call Putin." I said, "Don’t wait — call him right away."
But that created even stronger pressure. The pro-Russian and pro-corruption parties teamed up and took us down on a vote of no confidence seven months later. Since then, we’ve had new governments and new elections, but neither side has managed to get a full majority.
We will not bow to Russian pressure or corruption. It’s important for the U.S. and Europe to choose partners who are value-based. Autocrat leaders can make great short-term tactical deals, and yes, we all have election timelines, but we must not choose short-term gains at the expense of long-term consequences. The Russians are playing the long game, and we have to do the same.
Now, the question is: how do we escape this Groundhog Day scenario? One solution is to sideline oligarchs like Peevski, who is still influential in Bulgarian politics despite being on the Magnitsky list. People like Borisov have great people in their parties. They must give way to new leadership so that we can have a stable, long-term future for Bulgaria and the Balkans, and defeat Putin's regime in the long game.
Mike Pompeo: May I follow up? Just two quick thoughts. I have no idea how to stop you from having an eighth election. Parliamentary systems sometimes get stuck like that—look at Israel. But there are things the United States can do. We know who the parties are that are connected to Russian activity, and we know those who aren’t.
We need to use the tools available to us and encourage the Europeans to do more, extending the sanctions regime in ways we’ve resisted so far. We also need to address this systemically. The Russians have one decisionmaker in Moscow, but we have the complexity of Bulgarian leadership, EU leadership, and so on. Each country has its own dynamics. But the U.S. can drive a strategy for the whole region.
We need to support anti-corruption campaigns and give space to the pro-freedom parties—the parties that want to be part of Europe, part of the West, and disconnected from Russia. That’s our task as American leaders.
Moderator: Thank you so much. Turning now to American leadership, I have to ask: what would a second Trump administration mean for Bulgaria and the Western Balkans in terms of defense policy and energy security?
Mike Pompeo: You know, it's interesting. I do applaud the current administration for what they did in the moment when Russian gas—when you made the bold decision, they worked every avenue to get gas there as quickly as they could. I know they were working hard on it.
Having said that, when it comes to the policy of the region, or frankly, energy policy, I just think a Republican model is a better fit for delivering better outcomes for the entire region. It's a model that understands the absolute imperative for economic independence. We were just railing on the Germans about their reliance on Russian gas, and while we had a few knockdown drag outs with then the chancellor of the Exchequer, Schultz, now Chancellor Schultz over this very issue, we didn't know it would end this way, but we knew it would end badly. And so in this sense, I do think a President Trump will perform in a way, will deliver for the region better outcomes than President Harris can because her focus will just simply likely be in a different place.
I can't predict what a Harris administration will look like in the Balkans. I don't know that she has given that a heck of a lot of thought herself, but we do know the team that she'll bring around her. Right? […] We know it'll be a team that looked like President Obama’s and looks like the team that's there today. And this is not a team that has been able to focus in a way to push back against Russian influence, whether that's in Georgia or in Serbia or in the region more broadly.
Moderator: To return to the question of corruption—you’ve been such a principal proponent, Mr. Petkov, of anti-corruption measures. I think many of us that are really in awe of what you accomplished with regards to the National Resilience and Recovery Plan. I wonder how important you think those are in advancing Bulgaria's future in the European Union, and what difficulties you see in the future in implementing similar types of measures?
Kiril Petkov: It’s very hard to eliminate corruption in places where corruption has been a main source of revenue for a lot of political actors.
In parliament today, we wanted to take down the leadership of the Anti-Corruption Commission. By the way, even though we have the highest number of Magnitsky cases in Europe, we have not a single guy that's on Magnitsky that's been investigated by the Anti-Corruption Commission of Bulgaria. So in parliament today, my party voted to get this leadership out. And Borisov, and Peevski’s party, and some guys that were talking Euro-Atlantic but are really on the other side, and the socialists voted against this. So, this fight is complicated.
One thing that you mentioned, the European resilience and recovery plan, was one way to put [a monetary value on corruption]. We said, these are the reforms, and they'll cost Bulgarians 12 billion if they're not made. Let's see which politician would come and say, I don't want the 12 billion. And we thought we had cornered them, to be honest--turned out not to be the case.
One of the laws was a simpler law, which said only for whistleblowers. How about we have a protection for whistleblowers that talk about corruption cases. We thought that that would be easy, because whistleblowers are not such a heavy risk for these guys. Borisov said sure, but let’s have it timed after my government, so let’s do it after 2021. And I said, how about, OK, we can consider this. January 2021. He said, no, I prefer May. So these five months were obviously critical to him. I don't know.
Another challenge is what we call the "permanent infrastructure"—the prosecutor's office, the security services, the regulators, like the SEC type of regulators—they’re all bound into the same corrupt system. It’s a complicated game. In the beginning, we thought we could win it in three moves like chess, but it turns out the best we can do is make small cracks.
We have to redirect cash flows to places where the [corrupt actors] can’t reach. For example, we elevated over a million people above the poverty line by increasing pensions. Even though Bulgarian pensions are still the lowest in the EU, whoever comes to power can’t decrease pensions that have already been raised. And what we’re seeing today is that…when you start taking out some of the cash flows that are available for corruption…the result is that inter-fighting starts. So, for the first time in 0 years, one of the most corrupt parties, the MRF, that was a symbol of corruption, started fighting because of the limited funds that were available.
Where the U.S. has actually done a good job is the Magnitsky sanctions. The one thing that could be done more effectively, is that it shouldn’t just cover the top guy. It should cover the whole cluster around a person that is a key to corruption. For example, Peevski is on the Magnitsky list, but he’s living comfortably. One of his partners is holding his real estate, another is holding his cash. So he’s like, “I’m on Magnitsky, and I don’t care.” So, I think that even though it was very efficient in the beginning, we have to think of how to do a cluster approach so that it ties up the network.
Moderator: I really appreciate your willingness to highlight for us how some of your colleagues speak West and act East. And with that, though, I'm going to turn over to the audience if there are any questions for either of our speakers.
Audience Question: How do you see Russia’s cyber and disinformation efforts destabilizing the region, and what can be done to counter them?
Mike Pompeo: It’s broad and deep. They say the bad guys often show up first with diplomatic ID cards. Look, they’re very capable of not only taking over media outlets—that is, acquiring, buying, having proxies hold those assets so they have editorial control over the institutions, the means of communication and the message inside of that communication. But they're also very good at working bottoms up, that is with massive efforts from the populace to get replication of their messages. This is where there's lots of cyber work to be done. Some of this is overt, visible; other efforts are more clandestine. Where the effort is to obfuscate the hand clearly, right, so that it doesn't look like it is Russian disinformation, but looks like these are ordinary people speaking in the voice of Bulgarians in this case, or folks in the Balkans more broadly.
What cyber organizations like yours can do is shine a light on these networks. You can begin to identify these Russian networks and then certainly make sure that the population is aware of it and hopefully you will find governments that are prepared to assist in taking those networks down inside of their own countries. It is hard stuff. There is no doubt it is whack-a-mole. So as you take down a particular network, you take down a particular information stream, the Russians will generate more.
And it is especially difficult to do if you are country-specific focused, because there’s no boundary to this. This has to be a broader, deeper effort to push back against this disinformation, not only in the Balkans, but in Denver, Colorado. This is everywhere and throughout. I hope that answers your question.
Kiril Petkov: To follow up and add to your comments, I fully agree. What we’ve seen here in Bulgaria specifically are the mushroom websites. You put a message out, and suddenly it appears on 500 sites, and most of these sites are supposedly gossip sites. Then they combine that with troll factories, so it all appears in the comments on social media. They’re also good at branding individual people. For example, in my party, myself, the finance minister, and the second prime minister all get branded in specific ways. Even though they seem like random comments, they target the same message. I’m branded as the guy who can’t speak well, and Harvard is the worst university. Asen [the former Bulgarian finance minister] is branded as the smart one, but also as a thief. The prime minister, he's in top 1% of the Stanford list of scientists, is supposedly the weak guy that cannot compare to the strongmen of the Balkans.
With 500 mushroom websites and 1,000 articles per month, you start building public awareness, and that brand actually penetrates. So what we've been thinking, up to now, all the strategies have been a defense strategy. Like, OK, let's say this is fake news. Let's try to answer them. But it's almost impossible. There's so many. We're starting to think, how about we do this on the offence? How about we stop only defending the truth, but actually creating 500 sites on our side, speaking the truth? It’s a volume game, with one true site you can’t overcome and overpower 500 [false] ones.
The other thing is, the Russian propaganda, they’ve been able to segment the population by interest. So the “mom’s group”, “the older people’s group”, etc. and they target messaging according to their interests—it’s very specific messaging and people like it.
We should do the same. For example, there is a group about people that are interested in the city of Sofia, that kind of local group. And one way to counter Russian propaganda is, for example, to say, "Did you know one of our boulevards is named after a Russian who wrote a letter to the Ottoman Empire after they killed a Bulgarian national hero?" Or, "Did you know our cathedral is named after a Russian military man who ended up becoming Muslim?"
Little segmented messages of truth, delivered with volume, might be the next level [of countering disinformation], because just playing defense is not working. These guys are becoming more advanced; with AI they can segment even better. And I think we’re going to have to apply AI technology on the other side and say no, if we’re going to have a fight, it should be an equal fight, offense and defense on both sides.
Audience Question: You’ve both talked about the importance of pushing back against Russian influence. What is your advice to the next U.S. Secretary of State on how to calibrate the difficult question of supporting Ukraine?
Mike Pompeo: Two thoughts. First, I won’t give direct advice to the next Secretary of State—she or he will have plenty of people in their ear. But here’s two thoughts for an American perspective on this, what my critique of our policy to date.
To go back to the very beginning—and the beginning is not February 2022. The beginning is the fall of 2021 when it became very clear to the U.S. intelligence establishment that this was a go—Putin had made the decision [to invade]. Our intelligence community got it right this time—we don’t always, but we had this one just nailed, and we did nothing for months, then we proceeded to under-deliver against the need. The moment you can most effectively restore deterrence, at the least cost and risk, is at the very beginning of the conflict. Even in February or March of 2022, had we and Europe delivered powerful responses, things might be different now. I don’t just mean weaponry—that’s certainly true—I’m thinking of intelligence sharing. I’m thinking of global efforts to isolate the Russians, to reinforce against Chinese connectivity, to make clear to the Chinese as this progresses, you can't provide for them, you can't buy energy. If we'd have used those moments, those first months, and delivered a hard counter narrative and a hard counter power structure, we'd be in a better place than we are today.
The second piece of this is less about what I’ll call the soft and hard power and more about just theory of the case. It can’t be that if you’re supporting Ukraine, you spend most of your time talking about what you won’t do. When you’re the Secretary of State, you're giving advice to the President of the United States, you must think about what the second and third order implications are of your use of power.
Is it the case that, if you strike Qasem Soleimani, that you will create World War III? Is it the case that if you actually fire Tomahawk missiles into Syria after you said you would when they used chemical weapons, what will be the second ? If you recognize Israel's capital is Jerusalem, what will really happen? You have to think about those things. And there will be things that you just take off the table.
So I completely get that there are limits to the things you're prepared to do. You don't need to tell anybody. And you certainly don’t need to have that as your primary narrative, where the the president himself walks out and says, we need to prevent escalation. I mean, we've seen this multiple times from this administration. When you say, boy, we need a ceasefire in Gaza, well, no kidding, right? No kidding, we'd love to see less death and destruction everywhere and always, including in the Middle East. But if your primary narrative is one of restriction and you have outlined the things that you clearly will not do, you are painting a picture for how the adversary should conduct its campaign against you and will press the limits of those things that you say you won't do knowing full well that you didn't even list all of the things that you wouldn't do. And so these would be my two core critiques.
So for the next administration or I hope the one that's in power now, I hope they'll begin to think about those two central ideas about how you can and can’t constrain the partner with which you’re working. And second, you have to convince your adversary that there are very few things that you're not prepared to do even if it's the case that you know that there are things that are very difficult and very hard for you to actually execute. Those would be my two thoughts for this administration and the one that follows.
Kiril Petkov: Those are very strong points. I fully agree with your point that sanctions work best when they’re strong, fast, and full force from the start. With the same sanctions over a longer period of time, you give the other regime to start getting accustomed and to come up with ways to overcome them.
My experience dealing with strongmen from the East, let me put it this way, it's very hard to negotiate out of reason with these guys. You have to negotiate out of strength. They're used to this game. To have a balanced approach in the start of the negotiation would be seen as a weakness. So you have to show strength in the beginning.
The other thing is, we have to be strategic. After [Russia invaded Crimea], we said, "OK, this happened, it won’t happen again.”
This time, we have to learn our lesson. Let’s start creating strategies that take systematic resources away from the Russians. For example, let’s have a NATO mobility project from the Mediterranean to Ukraine that would immediately eliminate the hold on Ukrainian exports. Let’s see all of their human capital across Europe, let’s have a full map of all their agents. Let’s not tolerate them—what will happen if we tolerate them? Let’s stop with the Russian gas and oil issues just because it’s cheaper. There’s a price to be paid for taking a harder stance, but that’s the only language these guys understand. They understand negotiation out of strength. Otherwise, they’ll keep playing the game.
Then, if we play it strategically, as Mike said, with a long-term view and a strength going forward, we can beat them because our GDP is so much stronger, our production capacity is so much stronger. If we just do this coordination game and we don't bow to their blackmail, I think next year and the year after, we can overcome their military strength just because of production capacity even.
The final point is, of course, China is the big elephant in the room. We all understand it. And we have to face it. We cannot dance around and talk about the Ukrainian issue as though China is not the big answer to the puzzle. That would be my two cents.
Moderator: Well, thank you both so much. I think we’ll have to close for now, but of course there'll be drinks afterwards outside. If everyone would join me in giving our speakers a round of applause.
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