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For months, Bulgaria’s pro-Russian president fought to keep his country from joining an EU effort to make 155mm artillery shells for Ukraine. He appeared to lose that battle in June, when the country’s pro-Ukraine defense minister declared that the NATO ally would “not exclude” the possibility that domestic firms would produce the ammunition.
The U.S. contracting documents, however, imply the existence of major 155mm production capabilities in Bulgaria, experts said.
Others concurred, such as Mathew George, a senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, and Jerry McGinn, a former senior career official in the Defense Department’s Office of Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy who is now the executive director of the Greg and Camille Baroni Center for Government Contracting at George Mason University.