Did Bulgarian Prime Minister Nikolai Denkov cancel his official visit to the United States because the American President and the Pentagon refused to have a meeting with him? No, that's not true: Denkov altered his plans and called off his business trip to America to address the ongoing unrest and focus on resolving the issues with the protesting Bulgarian farmers.
The claim appeared in a TikTok video (archived here) published on February 4, 2024, with the caption (translated from Bulgarian to English by Lead Stories staff):
Terrible pratfall! Not only Biden, but also the Pentagon has refused a meeting with Denkov and Tagarev. Asen Vassilev and Laurer's wife travel with public funds for shopping.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Mon Feb 12 19:53:37 2024 UTC)
The false claim that Prime Minister Nikolai Denkov (archived here) cancelled his planned visit to America because President Biden and the Pentagon refused to have meetings with him has been circulating on social media and websites in Bulgaria (archived here, here, and here).
PM Denkov altered his plans (archived here) due to ongoing farmer negotiations. He redirected his diplomatic agenda and scheduled a one-day visit to the Netherlands (archived here). Bulgarian farmers joined (archived here) protests throughout the European Union, and blocked highways demanding (archived here) the resignation of the Minister of Agriculture and Food and compensation for the losses caused by the war in Ukraine and the EU regulations.
After a meeting with representatives of the branch organizations of agricultural producers, on February 5, 2024, the Prime Minister announced (archived here) at the Council of Ministers that he was staying in Bulgaria to finish the negotiations with the agricultural sector, and that three government ministers would leave on the same day for a visit to the United States: The Minister of Finance, Asen Vassilev, the Minister of Energy, Rumen Radev, and the Minister of Economy, Bogdan Bogdanov. When asked what the purpose of the ministers' business trip to the US was, Nikolai Denkov stated:
Every minister has something to discuss. When they return, they will present to the media what they have done and report to the National Assembly.
Other Lead Stories fact checks related to Bulgarian Prime Minister Nikolai Denkov can be found here.
