The means of diplomacy for bringing the war in Ukraine to an end have not been exhausted, Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev said in an interview with Euronews in Brussels on Wednesday. Radev spoke on the sidelines of the Euronews Defence and Space Summit, which brings together NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, European commissioners and MEPs, ministers, ambassadors and senior military officials.
“We have not exhausted the power of diplomacy, and we need to do and to speak more,” Radev said.
He argued that support for Ukraine should continue but that greater emphasis should be placed on creating the conditions for peace.
“There is a limit to just delivering weapons and supporting, because the final peace set-up will be done by diplomacy, not by delivering weapons. So our call is to listen more to each other, to open the lines of communication,” Radev said.
The Prime Minister also raised the risk of nuclear escalation, arguing that it should form part of Europe’s assessment of the conflict.
“The problem is that no one is raising the question about nuclear risk. Does it exist? Maybe not, I don’t know, but this is a risk,” he said. “We always need to think about the worst-case scenario.”
Radev said Russia’s nuclear arsenal could not be ignored in calculations about the course of the war. He rejected threatening rhetoric from Moscow but argued that European leaders should consider the potential consequences of further escalation.
“There is a nuclear card,” he said. “We need to have this into account. We cannot close our eyes [to the fact] that there are nuclear weapons on our continent, there are nuclear weapons in the arsenal of Russia. And this is part of the game calculation.”
Radev also spoke about what he described as the difficulty of departing from prevailing political positions on the war without being labelled pro-Russian.
“The war in Ukraine challenged our critical thinking and realistic approach,” he said. “It challenged our ability to assess the strategic centre of gravity of the opponent. It challenged most of all our ability to design feasible political objectives and to translate them into a sound military strategy and to define a desired end state.”
The Prime Minister argued that Europe should seek a better balance between military, economic and diplomatic instruments in its approach to the conflict. He also called for more effective diplomacy in the EU’s dealings with the United States and said the future of Ukraine, Moldova and the Western Balkan countries lies in the European Union.
Earlier at the summit, Radev addressed the growing importance of space capabilities for European defence. He said the war in Ukraine had demonstrated the importance of space to modern warfare and pointed to satellite signal jamming over the Black Sea as a risk to aviation safety.
Radev said Europe has world-class scientific capabilities but remains hampered by fragmentation in its space industry and excessive dependence on external suppliers of key equipment. He called for greater compatibility between national and European space programmes and increased use of joint procurement.
The Prime Minister cited Bulgarian satellite company EnduroSat as an example of success in the sector. He also recalled that Bulgaria was the sixth country in the world to send a person into space.
PM Radev for Euronews: We Have Not Exhausted Power of Diplomacy on Ukraine 2026 THE NEWS FROM BULGARIA – NEWS AGENCY 2009-2025 2026-09-30 13:51:37
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