New prime minister is determined to clean up the EU’s ‘most corrupt country’. But the Russia-Ukraine war has made that job even harder…
Kiril Petkov is not a typical Bulgarian prime minister. The 41-year-old probiotics entrepreneur and Harvard Business School graduate is a political newcomer. He could not be more different to Boyko Borissov, the burly former bodyguard who dominated Bulgarian politics for 12 years, until he resigned last year after months-long street protests against corruption.
After three general elections in eight months, Petkov’s newly created We Continue the Change party swept to power at the head of a four-party coalition, vowing to tackle Bulgaria’s most pernicious problem: corruption.