Bulgaria

 (Bulgarian: България, romanized: Bŭlgariya), officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeastern Europe. Located west of the Black Sea and south of the Danube river, Bulgaria is bordered by Greece and Turkey to the south, Serbia and North Macedonia to the west, and Romania to the north. It covers a territory of 110,994 square kilometres (42,855 sq mi) and is the 16th largest country in Europe. Sofia is the nation's capital and largest city; other major cities include Burgas, Plovdiv, and Varna.

Bulgaria first became independent from the Byzantine Empire in the 7th century CE, although it was reconquered by the Byzantines between 1018 and 1185 and later the Ottoman Empire between 1385 and 1878. It sided with the Central Powers during World War I and the Axis powers during World War II, before getting occupied by the Soviet Union as a Communist satellite state between 1945 and 1989. It transitioned into a liberal democracy after the Revolutions of 1989. It is a member of the European Union and NATO. Its current President is Rumen Radev and its current Prime Minister is Nikolai Denkov

Quotes

 * Long before the time when the German Emperor Charles V said that he talked German only to his horse, and when the German nobility wrote only in Latin and were ashamed of the German language, in "barbarous" Bulgaria, the Apostles Cyril and Methodius had created and spread the use of the old Bulgarian script.
 * Giorgi Dimitrov, at the, as reported in Mercia MacDermott, A History of Bulgaria: 1393–1885 (1962), p. 18


 * Oh, you foolish freaks! Why are you ashamed to call yourself Bulgarians and why don't you read and speak in your mother tongue? Do you believe that the Bulgarians did not have their own czardom and country? For many years, they reigned and were glorious, famous all over the world and they made the powerful Romans and the wise Greeks pay them taxes many times.
 * Paisius of Hilendar, Istoriya Slavyanobolgarskaya (1762), translation reported in Nations and States in Southeast Europe, 2nd ed. (CDRSEE, 2009), p. 27