Yotova Wins Bulgaria's Presidential Runoff After Campaign Built on 'President of Peace' Message

Iliana Yotova secured a decisive victory in Bulgaria's presidential runoff on Sunday, defeating former caretaker Prime Minister Andrey Gyurov by 57.6% to 39.5%, official results showed. Prime Minister Rumen Radev, who had told voters ahead of the ballot that they were choosing "between war and peace," said Bulgarians had chosen peace.

The runoff effectively turned into a referendum on the country's foreign policy and its stance on the war in Ukraine. Yotova opposes military aid to Ukraine and favors dialogue with Russia, while Gyurov is regarded as staunchly pro-European and pro-Ukrainian.

The outcome was not always so certain. When the campaign began on September 25, Yotova led the polls with 44.5% against Gyurov's 26.1%, but the first round proved much tighter than anticipated: she took 34.8% of the vote to his 31.95%, forcing the runoff. Yotova was backed by Radev and his ruling Progressive Bulgaria party, which won an absolute majority in the parliamentary election on April 19.

Despite the convincing margin, both the campaign and the result exposed a divided electorate. Dimitar Ganev, a sociologist and political scientist at the Trend market and electoral research agency, said the split is both generational and geographical, with voters aged 18 to 40 favoring Gyurov and those over 40 tending to prefer Yotova. "It also appears that Gyurov dominates in the capital, Sofia. In smaller regional cities, other towns and villages, Yotova dominates decisively," he told DW.

The campaigns themselves reflected that divide. Gyurov relied mainly on social media, while Yotova spoke mostly to Progressive Bulgaria supporters in closed venues, where the war in Ukraine was always high on the agenda. "As long as I am president, and if you place your trust in me, not a single Bulgarian soldier will go to Ukraine," she declared at an election rally on October 6, even though the Bulgarian Constitution gives parliament, not the president, the authority to send troops abroad or declare war. Throughout the campaign she referred to her opponents as "warmongers" and described herself as the "president of peace." "We won because we talked to people about income and about peace," she said after the election.

In this she is similar to Radev, who regularly speaks of the need for peace and avoids calling Russia an "aggressor." Both oppose military aid to Ukraine and criticize European leaders for not making sufficient efforts to engage with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Gyurov, by contrast, has sharply criticized Russian aggression. Appointed caretaker prime minister by Yotova in February, he signed a security cooperation agreement with Ukraine in March, provoking the disapproval of both Yotova and Radev.

In the weeks before the vote, several ships in the Black Sea were hit by drones off the Bulgarian coast. The European Council criticized Russia for the escalation, and the European Parliament called on the EU and its member states "to consider deploying an EU naval operation" there. Radev went no further than summoning the Russian ambassador and stating that "logic suggests that the outcome" of the attacks "is to the advantage of the Russian Federation." Days before the runoff, he noted that two ships had been struck and sunk in Romanian territorial waters after Romania held Russia responsible, remarks that drew criticism from politicians and media in Romania. Yotova also did not name Russia as the perpetrator, saying during her campaign that she did not want to see "foreign flags in Bulgaria," a clear reference to the Ukrainian flag displayed outside several institutions in solidarity with the war-torn country.

Turnout on Sunday was less than 30%, partly because most opposition parties, including the right-wing conservative GERB led by former long-serving Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, refused to field a candidate. In the first round, pro-Russian candidate Kostadin Kostadinov of the nationalist Vazrazhdane party came third with 12.5%, and according to Ganev around 70% of Vazrazhdane voters backed Yotova in the runoff. To secure their support, Yotova targeted pro-Russian voters, telling a podcast two days before the vote that "Russia is by no means an enemy of Bulgaria" and adding that she hoped it would be "a key factor in the future security architecture across Europe, including for us."

In the days before the vote, some of her supporters began claiming the opposition was preparing a "Maidan," a reference to the 2014 Ukrainian revolution that ousted the Moscow-friendly President Viktor Yanukkovych. "All of Gyurov's lackeys are speaking openly about inevitable protests. They're using prime time to stir up a Maidan. Every single one of them," Sonya Momchilova, who was appointed to the media regulator by Radev, wrote on Facebook on Sunday. Similar claims were made by former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and former Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic ahead of elections in their countries this year.

Critics warned of consequences for Bulgaria's place in Europe. "This claim that Ms. Yotova will be a president of peace is directly linked to the incitement of a fear of war," said former Defense Minister Todor Tagarev, who was part of the committee that nominated Gyurov, adding that Bulgaria would be "in a much worse position within Europe and NATO under her leadership." Ganev, however, sees no threat to the country's commitments, noting that over two-thirds of Bulgarians do not question its geopolitical orientation and around two-thirds view the EU positively. Still, he said, the positions of Radev and Yotova, which many view as ambivalent, mobilized both the pro-European camp and the roughly one-third of the population that is Eurosceptic. And while Radev and Yotova say the Bulgarian people chose peace, the war continues.