There are a lot of Russians which use Bulgaria as an EU base.
The infamous BTC-e exchange was also in Bulgaria and operated by Russians, and engaged in wide-scale money laundering.
> Mileva said that the people under investigation were Bulgarian nationals and the company, which she repeatedly described as a “cryptobank”, was operating primarily from Bulgaria.
However there are lots of very pro-Russia Bulgarians (hard to explain after everything that has happened, but still..), so your point generally stands.
Here is an excerpt from wiki which explains why some in Bulgaria are still "pro-russia":
"The Western European Enlightenment in the 18th century influenced the initiation of a national awakening of Bulgaria.[63] It restored national consciousness and provided an ideological basis for the liberation struggle, resulting in the 1876 April Uprising. Up to 30,000 Bulgarians were killed as Ottoman authorities put down the rebellion. The massacres prompted the Great Powers to take action.[73] They convened the Constantinople Conference in 1876, but their decisions were rejected by the Ottomans. This allowed the Russian Empire to seek a military solution without risking confrontation with other Great Powers, as had happened in the Crimean War.[73] In 1877, Russia declared war on the Ottomans and defeated them with the help of Bulgarian rebels, particularly during the crucial Battle of Shipka Pass which secured Russian control over the main road to Constantinople"
Now we've got a generation of youth coming to power who get their world view from social media and thus see reality objectively.
That's a terrifying idea tbh.
It all seemed fair until this fragment. Nothing about social media is objectively true. The advantage of social media (hopefully) is that's you're exposed to people from a variety of cultures so that you can choose who's subjective truths to believe in. It's better than powerful single voices influencing the ignorant using mass media though.
While Russia may have had some influence in the events at the end of the 19th century, they are also responsible for Bulgaria's abrupt transition from monarchy to a soviet country in the 1940s. Bulgaria was a soviet country until 1990… which is a very long time of persistent atrocities and brainwashing.
The “Russian occupation” of the hearts and minds of boomers who are still alive today is difficult to shake.
Which isn't to say that most "non-brainwashed" millennials and Gen-Z'ers are at all trying to be objective about that historical period. For them it's only prison camps, state surveillance and shortages and queues. Nothing like an accelerated industrialisation and modernisation in a few decades, transitioning from a backwards agrarian rural society to a well-educated population and reaching western-like levels of human development in the 1980s.
I could go on, but basically Russia's goodwill was spent in the first few decades of them incompetently and arrogantly bumbling around and making it extremely hard for the young optimistic nation which was really looking towards Russia as the big helpful brother and desperately needed help to survive.
Today you can also add 50 years of imposed socialism, which had its ups and downs (massive industrial, education, sport advancements) but was imposed and kept with tanks, and Russia's aggressive and imperialist foreign policy which directly results in tens of thousands of deaths. Why the fuck would anyone still think Russia is the good guys? This can only come out of blatant misunderstanding of history.