Bulgaria recognized Kosovo as an independent self-proclaimed country in 2008, which strained relations between the two nations, the two countries enjoy good cooperation in the area of culture, as seen in the examples of co-production of Serbian movies.[1]
Bulgarian revolutionary Georgi Sava Rakovski was provided shelter in Belgrade, revolutionary publications were printed in the city and Rakovski's armed group joined clashes against Ottomans in Belgrade in 1862.[2] In 1867, a Bulgarian society, active in Bucharest approached the Serbian state with a draft-agreement. The Bulgarian side proposed the founding of a common Serbo-Bulgarian (Bulgaro-Serbian) dual state called South Slav Tsardom, headed by the Serbian Prince. Serbian Prime minister Ilija Garašanin accepted the Bulgarian proposal in a letter from June 1867, but he diplomatically refused to sign the document, fearing how representative this organisation had been.[3] The establishment of this common state concerned other Bulgarian organisations, which perceived it as an implementation of Garašanin's plan called Načertanije.[4][5]
In 2018, Serbia and Bulgaria celebrated 140 years of modern diplomatic relations.[6][7]
Serbian Presidents Aleksandar Vučić and Bulgarian PM Boyko Borisov concluded that the opening of the Balkan Pipeline through Bulgaria and Serbia in 2021 was a "remarkable success of the two fraternal states".[8]
^Papadrianos, Ioannis: "The First Balkan Alliance (1860–1868) and the Bulgarians", Balkan Studies, 42 (2001): pp. 15–20.
^Crampton 1987, p. 16: "...a Balkan alliance, which alarmed both Bulgarians and Turks with its implications of Serbian expansionism as expounded two decades previously, in Garasanin's Nacertanie, the Serbian equivalent of Greek Megali Idea."
^SANU 1993, p. 172: "The result of Nacertumje's implementation was the establishment of the first Balkan alliance (1866–1868)..."
Antić, Dejan D. "A view of Serbian-Bulgarian relations at the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century." Godišnjak Pedagoškog fakulteta u Vranju 7 (2016): 55–67.
