Bulgarian President Rumen Radev has held a press conference on the occasion of one year of his stepping into office. He pointed out that the main focus of his work was defending the sovereignty and security of Bulgaria.

President Radev believes that Bulgaria is at a critical moment of its development. The parliamentary republic has been atrophying and parliament becoming more and more of a notary, stamping government's decrees, the President said. According to him, corruption demoralizes society as a whole, while freedom of speech was threatened.

Speaking about Bulgaria’s foreign policy, Rumen Radev said that it should be formed in this country and protected abroad, not the other way round and added we should create friends, not enemies. The President said he had meetings with almost all Heads of States and Government in the Balkans and started normalizing relations with Russia. I believe that 2018, when we mark the 140th anniversary of the Liberation of Bulgaria, is an opportunity to take Bulgarian-Russian relations out of the ice cold in which I found them, the President pointed out.

President Radev said a failure in work was that he could not managed to convince the government to raise defense spending to 2% of GDP.