Polina Paunova is a correspondent for RFE/RL's Bulgarian Service.
The bloody beating of a doctor by a notorious anti-vaxxer in Bulgaria -- where COVID-19 infections are high and vaccination rates low -- has shocked the country after video of the attack went viral.
It's a far-right, pro-Kremlin party that denies the COVID-19 pandemic, wants Bulgaria to exit both NATO and the EU, and now is about to get a bigger platform to spread that message. Vazrazhdane, or Revival, has won seats in parliament in the country's November 14 elections.
As Bulgaria prepares for presidential and parliamentary elections on November 14, RFE/RL's Bulgarian Service has exposed alleged abuses of the country's home-voting system during snap parliamentary elections in July.
Analysts say controversial Bulgarian oligarch Delyan Peevski is being distanced from the Movement for Rights and Freedoms so the party can position itself better after the April elections.
An under-the-radar pollster with outlier numbers and ties to the ruling coalition shows up on public broadcaster BNT to testify to the governing parties' popularity, whether it's true or not.
Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Gebrev fell into a coma in Sofia in April 2015 after someone smeared the door handles of his car with a substance similar to Novichok -- the nerve agent that hospitalized former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny.
They've preserved the shot-up carcass of 11-month-old Ultron, but conservationists say "all traces have long since been erased" at the scene of the crime.
It was meant to be one of Bulgaria's tallest buildings, but the Sofia construction project could become an unfinished monument to a real-estate scandal involving the ruling GERB party.
