FM Vigenin to Visit Kiev, Discuss Bulgarian Minority Rights

Bulgarian Foreign Minister Kristian Vigenin is heading for Kiev on Tuesday to discuss the safety of the Bulgarian minority in Ukraine.

The decision was announced after an emergency meeting of EU top diplomats over the Ukrainian crisis in Brussels, as the Bulgarian National Television has reported.

More than 200 000 Bulgarians live in Ukraine according to the 2001 census.

Apart from the capital, Vigenin also intends to travel to the Ukrainian city of Odessa, where a compact group of Bulgarians is concentrated and which is just a few hundred km away from the Crimean Peninsula and approximately 311 km from its capital, Simferopol, where tensions have been recently on the rise.

The Foreign Minister also claimed that during the visit he will make it clear that bilateral relations depend upon how the Bulgarian minority is treated.

Bulgaria has expressed its indignation at the new Ukrainian leadership's decision to scrap a law giving minority languages across the country the status of "official" ones within a region if they are spoken by more than 10% of the population.

The legislation was cancelled after being introduced by the party of ousted president Viktor Yanukovych in 2012 and sparked the outrage of ethnic Russians who are the prevailing population in Crimea and a significant part of Eastern Ukraine.

Vigenin declared that all groups, regions, and national minorities should be included in the new government and that their rights should be protected in accordance with Ukraine's international commitments.

We need your support so Novinite.com can keep delivering news and information about Bulgaria! Thank you!