Bulgaria Starts Sending BTR-60 Armored Personnel Carriers to Ukraine

6 March, 2024 BTR-60 armored personnel carriers prepared for shipment to Ukraine. Photo credits: Novinite The Bulgarian Ministry of Defense has begun preparing BTR-60 armored personnel carriers for shipment to Ukraine.

Btv Novinite reported on this. First of all, it regards the announced 110 Soviet-era BTR-60 armored personnel carriers, which were previously used by the Bulgarian Land Forces. The first six armored personnel carriers were loaded onto trucks and sent from the base of the General Directorate of the Gendarmerie in Sofia to the railway station in Novi Iskar.

BTR-60 armored personnel carriers prepared for shipment to Ukraine.

Photo credits: Novinite

According to the Bulgarian Ministry of Defense, the armored personnel carriers will be transferred to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. The transfer of unnecessary armored vehicles from the Bulgarian Ministry of Defense inventory was announced in the summer of 2023, but was delayed because President Rumen Radev vetoed it. Later, thanks to a majority in the National Assembly, the veto was overridden.

In November 2023, Bulgaria's National Assembly ratified an intergovernmental agreement between Sofia and Kyiv that regulates the transfer of 100 decommissioned armored personnel carriers to Ukraine. At the same time, Bulgaria argued that even without the ratification of the agreement, it was possible to transfer the first APCs last fall.

BTR-60 armored personnel carriers prepared for shipment to Ukraine. Photo credits: Novinite

It is worth noting that this is the first time that Bulgaria has transferred armored vehicles to Kyiv directly, and not through intermediaries, as it had done before.

As Militarnyi previously reported, Bulgaria recorded the movement of 2C1 Gvozdika self-propelled howitzers removed from storage. The decommissioned 122-mm Gvozdika howitzers were stored in fairly favorable conditions and remained in good condition. For their part, the BRDM-2 armored vehicles look worn out and will likely require significant restoration.

Machine guns were also removed from the BRDM-2.