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126-673: The Bulgarian Land Forces ( Bulgarian : Сухопътни войски на България , romanized :  Sukhopŭtni voĭski na Bŭlgariya , lit.   'Ground Forces of Bulgaria') are the ground warfare branch of the Bulgarian Armed Forces . It is administered by the Ministry of Defence, previously known as the Ministry of War during the Tsardom of Bulgaria . The Land Forces were established in 1878, when they were composed of anti-Ottoman militia ( opalchentsi ) and were

252-528: A Red Army -backed left-wing coup d'état overthrew the pro-German government and installed a Fatherland Front government. All active Bulgarian troops were incorporated into the Soviet 3rd Ukrainian Front and began to fight their former German allies. The Bulgarian 1st Army took part in the Yugoslav campaign. During Operation Frühlingserwachen , it fielded 101,000 men. At the end of March 1945, 1st Army led

378-414: A Rocket Artillery Division, with 130mm RM-51 multiple rocket launchers; and logistic, maintenance, chemical defence, medical, security, and signal units. The three Army Operational-Tactical Missile Brigades – one for each army, plus a Frontal Operation-Tactical Missile Brigade as General Reserve, each had two missile divisions, with 4x R-300 Elbrus (Scud-B) ballistic missile launchers assigned to each of

504-459: A SAM brigade; and a parachute regiment (later identified as the 68th Independent Parachute Reconnaissance Regiment, forerunner to today's 68th Special Forces Brigade (Bulgaria) ) and special commando companies. It appears by the late 1980s that a Bulgarian-helmed Balkan Front was active in embryo, which would unfold and direct the three armies after mobilization. After 1987 the motor rifle divisions were reorganised into brigades as well. At that time

630-479: A company. The naval sense, an officer who commands a man-of-war , is somewhat earlier, from the 1550s, later extended in meaning to "master or commander of any kind of vessel". A captain in the period prior to the professionalization of the armed services of European nations subsequent to the French Revolution , during the early modern period , was a nobleman who purchased the right to head a company from

756-532: A consonant and are feminine, as well as nouns that end in –а/–я (most of which are feminine, too) use –та. Nouns that end in –е/–о use –то. The plural definite article is –те for all nouns except for those whose plural form ends in –а/–я; these get –та instead. When postfixed to adjectives the definite articles are –ят/–я for masculine gender (again, with the longer form being reserved for grammatical subjects), –та for feminine gender, –то for neuter gender, and –те for plural. Both groups agree in gender and number with

882-656: A decisive victory at Kirk Kilisse and captured Adrianople after a prolonged siege. A British war correspondent of the era compared the determination of Bulgarian troops to kill their enemy with that of the Japanese and the Gurkhas . The Second Balkan War began shortly after the end of the first one. A dispute between Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece over the division of Macedonia prompted the Bulgarian leadership to attack its neighbours. Bulgarian troops were still exhausted by

1008-528: A dialect continuum, and there is no well-defined boundary where one language ends and the other begins. Within the limits of the Republic of North Macedonia a strong separate Macedonian identity has emerged since the Second World War, even though there still are a small number of citizens who identify their language as Bulgarian. Beyond the borders of North Macedonia, the situation is more fluid, and

1134-602: A few non-Commonwealth air forces use an air force-specific rank structure in which flight lieutenant is OF-2. A group captain is derived from the naval rank of captain. Canada is a unique exception. Due to the unification of the Canadian Armed Forces in 1968, the air force rank titles are the same as those of the Canadian Army. However, like their Commonwealth counterparts, rank braids are pearl grey and increase in half strip increments. The decision

1260-598: A heavy blow on the numerically superior British Army , which suffered 12,000 casualties against two thousand from the opposite side. One year later, during the Third Battle of Doiran , the United Kingdom, supported by Greece, once again suffered a humiliating defeat, losing 3,155 men against just about five hundred for the Bulgarian side. The reputation of the French Army also suffered badly. The Battle of

1386-502: A middle ground between the macrodialects. It allows palatalizaton only before central and back vowels and only partial reduction of / a / and / ɔ / . Reduction of / ɛ / , consonant palatalisation before front vowels and depalatalization of palatalized consonants before central and back vowels is strongly discouraged and labelled as provincial. Bulgarian has six vowel phonemes, but at least eight distinct phones can be distinguished when reduced allophones are taken into consideration. There

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1512-722: A military campaign against Bulgaria. The Serbs, expecting a quick end to the war, suffered losses and were pushed back by Bulgarian troops who did not have higher-ranking officers than captains at the time. Owing to its militaristic policy at the time, Bulgaria was labelled as "the Balkan Prussia". In the early 1900s instability in the Balkans continued, as the collapse of the Ottoman Empire progressed. After an anti-Ottoman rebellion in Macedonia and an Ottoman defeat in

1638-654: A missile division, with 2x 9K52 Luna-M ballistic missile launchers (Were being replaced with OTR-21 Tochka in the late 1980s); an Engineer Company; and logistic, maintenance, chemical defence, medical, and signal units. By July 1987, the International Institute for Strategic Studies estimated that the Land Forces were organised in eight motor rifle divisions, five tank brigades; four surface-to-surface missile brigades with "Scud" SSMs; three artillery regiments; three anti-aircraft artillery regiments;

1764-446: A much smaller group of irregular nouns with zero ending which define tangible objects or concepts ( кръв /krɤf/ 'blood', кост /kɔst/ 'bone', вечер /ˈvɛtʃɛr/ 'evening', нощ /nɔʃt/ 'night'). There are also some commonly used words that end in a vowel and yet are masculine: баща 'father', дядо 'grandfather', чичо / вуйчо 'uncle', and others. The plural forms of the nouns do not express their gender as clearly as

1890-490: A number of phraseological units and sayings. The major exception are vocative forms, which are still in use for masculine (with the endings -е, -о and -ю) and feminine nouns (-[ь/й]о and -е) in the singular. In modern Bulgarian, definiteness is expressed by a definite article which is postfixed to the noun, much like in the Scandinavian languages or Romanian (indefinite: човек , 'person'; definite: човек ът , "

2016-636: A self-propelled Field Artillery Divizion, with 18x self-propelled 122mm 2S1 Gvozdika howitzers; a reconnaissance company, with BRDM-2 armored cars and tracked BRM "Sova" reconnaissance vehicles; an anti-aircraft rocket battery, with 4x Strela-10 air defence systems; a missile division, with two 9K52 Luna-M ballistic missile launchers (Were being replaced with OTR-21 Tochka in the late 1980s); an engineer company; and logistic, maintenance, chemical defence, medical, and signal units. The three rocket artillery brigades included 3x Rocket Artillery Divisions, with 18x 122mm BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launchers ;

2142-531: A special count form in –а/–я , which stems from the Proto-Slavonic dual : два/три стола ('two/three chairs') versus тези столове ('these chairs'); cf. feminine две/три/тези книги ('two/three/these books') and neuter две/три/тези легла ('two/three/these beds'). However, a recently developed language norm requires that count forms should only be used with masculine nouns that do not denote persons. Thus, двама/трима ученици ('two/three students')

2268-637: A static fortified defensive line along the Turkish border, unofficially called the " Krali Marko Line" . Later, when the T-54 and T-55 started replacing the T-34 in larger quantities, some of the retired Soviet tanks were added. In 1950 two new tank divisions were formed (in Sofia and Kazanlak), but with the technological advancements and the increase in weight and dimensions of the tanks at that time after an evaluation it

2394-635: Is " Ye lena Yankovich" ( Йелена Янкович ). Until the period immediately following the Second World War , all Bulgarian and the majority of foreign linguists referred to the South Slavic dialect continuum spanning the area of modern Bulgaria, North Macedonia and parts of Northern Greece as a group of Bulgarian dialects. In contrast, Serbian sources tended to label them "south Serbian" dialects. Some local naming conventions included bolgárski , bugárski and so forth. The codifiers of

2520-647: Is also a significant Bulgarian diaspora abroad. One of the main historically established communities are the Bessarabian Bulgarians , whose settlement in the Bessarabia region of nowadays Moldova and Ukraine dates mostly to the early 19th century. There were 134,000 Bulgarian speakers in Ukraine at the 2001 census, 41,800 in Moldova as of the 2014 census (of which 15,300 were habitual users of

2646-838: Is an Eastern South Slavic language spoken in Southeast Europe , primarily in Bulgaria . It is the language of the Bulgarians . Along with the closely related Macedonian language (collectively forming the East South Slavic languages ), it is a member of the Balkan sprachbund and South Slavic dialect continuum of the Indo-European language family . The two languages have several characteristics that set them apart from all other Slavic languages , including

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2772-496: Is based on a general consensus reached by all major Bulgarian linguists in the 1930s and 1940s. In turn, the 39-consonant model was launched in the beginning of the 1950s under the influence of the ideas of Russian linguist Nikolai Trubetzkoy . Despite frequent objections, the support of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences has ensured Trubetzkoy's model virtual monopoly in state-issued phonologies and grammars since

2898-433: Is common in all modern Slavic languages (e.g. Czech medv ě d /ˈmɛdvjɛt/ "bear", Polish p ię ć /pʲɛ̃tɕ/ "five", Serbo-Croatian je len /jělen/ "deer", Ukrainian нема є /nemájɛ/ "there is not   ...", Macedonian пишува ње /piʃuvaɲʲɛ/ "writing", etc.), as well as some Western Bulgarian dialectal forms – e.g. ора̀н’е /oˈraɲʲɛ/ (standard Bulgarian: оране /oˈranɛ/ , "ploughing"), however it

3024-405: Is currently no consensus on the number of Bulgarian consonants, with one school of thought advocating for the existence of only 22 consonant phonemes and another one claiming that there are not fewer than 39 consonant phonemes. The main bone of contention is how to treat palatalized consonants : as separate phonemes or as allophones of their respective plain counterparts. The 22-consonant model

3150-817: Is mainly split into two broad dialect areas, based on the different reflexes of the Proto-Slavic yat vowel (Ѣ). This split, which occurred at some point during the Middle Ages, led to the development of Bulgaria's: The literary language norm, which is generally based on the Eastern dialects, also has the Eastern alternating reflex of yat . However, it has not incorporated the general Eastern umlaut of all synchronic or even historic "ya" sounds into "e" before front vowels – e.g. поляна ( polyana ) vs. полени ( poleni ) "meadow – meadows" or even жаба ( zhaba ) vs. жеби ( zhebi ) "frog – frogs", even though it co-occurs with

3276-479: Is not represented in standard Bulgarian speech or writing. Even where /jɛ/ occurs in other Slavic words, in Standard Bulgarian it is usually transcribed and pronounced as pure /ɛ/ – e.g. Boris Yeltsin is "Eltsin" ( Борис Елцин ), Yekaterinburg is "Ekaterinburg" ( Екатеринбург ) and Sarajevo is "Saraevo" ( Сараево ), although – because of the stress and the beginning of the word – Jelena Janković

3402-478: Is one more to describe a general category of unwitnessed events – the inferential (преизказно /prɛˈiskɐzno/ ) mood. However, most contemporary Bulgarian linguists usually exclude the subjunctive mood and the inferential mood from the list of Bulgarian moods (thus placing the number of Bulgarian moods at a total of 3: indicative, imperative and conditional) and do not consider them to be moods but view them as verbial morphosyntactic constructs or separate gramemes of

3528-401: Is perceived as more correct than двама/трима ученика , while the distinction is retained in cases such as два/три молива ('two/three pencils') versus тези моливи ('these pencils'). Cases exist only in the personal and some other pronouns (as they do in many other modern Indo-European languages ), with nominative , accusative , dative and vocative forms. Vestiges are present in

3654-418: Is that mutable parts of speech vary grammatically, whereas the immutable ones do not change, regardless of their use. The five classes of mutables are: nouns , adjectives , numerals , pronouns and verbs . Syntactically, the first four of these form the group of the noun or the nominal group. The immutables are: adverbs , prepositions , conjunctions , particles and interjections . Verbs and adverbs form

3780-652: Is the Service of Saint Cyril from Skopje (Скопски миней), a 13th-century Middle Bulgarian manuscript from northern Macedonia according to which St. Cyril preached with "Bulgarian" books among the Moravian Slavs. The first mention of the language as the "Bulgarian language" instead of the "Slavonic language" comes in the work of the Greek clergy of the Archbishopric of Ohrid in the 11th century, for example in

3906-399: Is used, and the choice between them is partly determined by their ending in singular and partly influenced by gender; in addition, irregular declension and alternative plural forms are common. Words ending in –а/–я (which are usually feminine) generally have the plural ending –и , upon dropping of the singular ending. Of nouns ending in a consonant, the feminine ones also use –и , whereas

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4032-517: The 13th Tank Brigade at Sliven , and the 24th Tank Brigade at Aytos in the 3rd Army) included three Tank Battalions, with T-72 main battle tanks or T-55 ; a motor Rifle Battalion, with BMP-23 infantry fighting vehicles or BMP-1 ; a Self-propelled Field Artillery Divizion, with 18x self-propelled 122mm 2S1 Gvozdika howitzers; a Reconnaissance Company, with BRDM-2 armored cars and tracked BRM "Sova" reconnaissance vehicles; an Anti-aircraft Battery, with 4x Strela-10 air defence missiles;

4158-551: The Balkan language area (mostly grammatically) and later also by Turkish , which was the official language of the Ottoman Empire , in the form of the Ottoman Turkish language , mostly lexically. The damaskin texts mark the transition from Middle Bulgarian to New Bulgarian, which was standardized in the 19th century. As a national revival occurred toward the end of the period of Ottoman rule (mostly during

4284-714: The Bulgarian Empire introduced the Glagolitic alphabet which was devised by the Saints Cyril and Methodius in the 850s. The Glagolitic alphabet was gradually superseded in later centuries by the Cyrillic script , developed around the Preslav Literary School , Bulgaria in the late 9th century. Several Cyrillic alphabets with 28 to 44 letters were used in the beginning and the middle of

4410-575: The Greek hagiography of Clement of Ohrid by Theophylact of Ohrid (late 11th century). During the Middle Bulgarian period, the language underwent dramatic changes, losing the Slavonic case system , but preserving the rich verb system (while the development was exactly the opposite in other Slavic languages) and developing a definite article. It was influenced by its non-Slavic neighbors in

4536-697: The Italo-Turkish War , Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia and Montenegro settled their differences and formed a coalition against the Ottoman Empire, known as the Balkan League . In late September 1912, both the League and the Ottoman Empire mobilised their armies. Montenegro was the first to declare war, on 25 September. The other three states, after issuing an impossible ultimatum to the Sublime Porte on 13 October, declared war on 17 October. Bulgaria

4662-766: The Nagykanizsa–Körmend Offensive . After defeating the German units, the Bulgarians reached the Austrian Alps and on 13 May they met the British 8th Army near Klagenfurt . The Vienna Offensive was one of the final operations with Bulgarian participation during World War II. By 1947, the Soviet Union began to strengthen the armed forces of its new satellite state. The only armoured formation in

4788-679: The War of the Stray Dog . By the mid-1930s, the army had begun an expansion in violation of the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine , following the rearmament pattern of Nazi Germany . During this period, the Bulgarian government procured combat aircraft from Germany and France, and light tanks from Italy. During World War II , Bulgarian troops did not participate in either the invasions of Yugoslavia or Greece, but occupied parts of northern Greece and Yugoslav Macedonia after they were conquered by Germany. The army

4914-803: The accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007, Cyrillic became the third official script of the European Union , following the Latin and Greek scripts . Bulgarian possesses a phonology similar to that of the rest of the South Slavic languages, notably lacking Serbo-Croatian's phonemic vowel length and tones and alveo-palatal affricates. There is a general dichotomy between Eastern and Western dialects, with Eastern ones featuring consonant palatalization before front vowels ( / ɛ / and / i / ) and substantial vowel reduction of

5040-567: The naval rank of captain , or with the UK-influenced air force rank of group captain , both of which are equivalent to the army rank of colonel . The term ultimately goes back to Late Latin capitaneus meaning "head of [something]"; in Middle English adopted as capitayn in the 14th century, from Old French capitaine . The military rank of captain was in use from the 1560s, referring to an officer who commands

5166-445: The person") or to the first nominal constituent of definite noun phrases (indefinite: добър човек , 'a good person'; definite: добри ят човек , " the good person"). There are four singular definite articles. Again, the choice between them is largely determined by the noun's ending in the singular. Nouns that end in a consonant and are masculine use –ът/–ят, when they are grammatical subjects , and –а/–я elsewhere. Nouns that end in

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5292-649: The " Big Excursion " of 1989. The language is also represented among the diaspora in Western Europe and North America, which has been steadily growing since the 1990s. Countries with significant numbers of speakers include Germany , Spain , Italy , the United Kingdom (38,500 speakers in England and Wales as of 2011), France , the United States , and Canada (19,100 in 2011). The language

5418-595: The 16th MRD on 6 February 1961) and five tank brigades at full strength within the Land Forces, and additional three motor rifle divisions at reduced strength. By August 1966, the Institute for Strategic Studies in London was reporting that Bulgaria had a total of eight motorized infantry divisions. 333 Т-72s of Soviet and Czechoslovak manufacture were delivered up until the collapse of the Socialist bloc, spread between

5544-568: The 1960s. However, its reception abroad has been lukewarm, with a number of authors either calling the model into question or outright rejecting it. Thus, the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association only lists 22 consonants in Bulgarian's consonant inventory . The parts of speech in Bulgarian are divided in ten types, which are categorized in two broad classes: mutable and immutable. The difference

5670-541: The 1980s the foreign debt of the People's Republic of Bulgaria has exceeded 100% of its GDP. Combined with the termination by Mikhail Gorbachev of Soviet crude oil deliveries free of charge, which Bulgaria was able to refine and export to Western buyers at considerable gain, these factors have put the economy of the People's Republic in a very difficult situation. The attempts in 1987 made by the country's leader Zhivkov to secure fresh loans from West German commercial banks with

5796-464: The 19th century during the efforts on the codification of Modern Bulgarian until an alphabet with 32 letters, proposed by Marin Drinov , gained prominence in the 1870s. The alphabet of Marin Drinov was used until the orthographic reform of 1945, when the letters yat (uppercase Ѣ, lowercase ѣ) and yus (uppercase Ѫ, lowercase ѫ) were removed from its alphabet, reducing the number of letters to 30. With

5922-461: The 19th century), a modern Bulgarian literary language gradually emerged that drew heavily on Church Slavonic/Old Bulgarian (and to some extent on literary Russian , which had preserved many lexical items from Church Slavonic) and later reduced the number of Turkish and other Balkan loans. Today one difference between Bulgarian dialects in the country and literary spoken Bulgarian is the significant presence of Old Bulgarian words and even word forms in

6048-654: The 1st, 2nd and 3rd Army Corps respectively, while two mechanised divisions were to be fielded in Northern Bulgaria - the 15th in Pleven and the 18th in Shumen. Each army corps was planned to have 1 or 2 tank brigades and 3 or 4 mechanised brigades, while the two mechanised divisions were to have three mechanised brigades each to a total of 17 mechanised, 4 tank and 1 separate mountain brigades, 3 ballistic missile brigades, 3 artillery brigades and 3 artillery regiments. At

6174-472: The 1st, 2nd, 3rd Army and the General Reserve respectively. The front line infantry divisions started forming tank battalions (one each) and several hundred trophy German tanks were transferred to Bulgaria to form a static fortified defensive line along the Turkish border, unofficially called the " Krali Marko Line". Later, when the T-54 and T-55 started replacing the T-34 in larger quantities, some of

6300-658: The 2nd Army Corps transforms into the Operational Forces Command. The 61st Mechanised Brigade is earmarked for deployment with the Greek NATO Rapid Deployment Corps for exercises, emergencies and for actions alongside NATO. For that reason the corps has a Bulgarian major-general as a deputy commander. In addition to its training tasks the Specialists Training Center , Sliven, is the storage facility of

6426-507: The 3rd Army. On September 1, 1994 (ahead of the planned start in 1995) the Ground Forces commenced with the implementation of the "corps-brigade" force model, but the catastrophic economic conditions and the chronic lack of finances thwarted these efforts. A new revised concept was put together in 1995–96. The GF was to transition from an "army - division - regiment - battalion" model to a mixed model. The three armies were to convert to

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6552-399: The 9th and 13th Tank Brigades and training centers. The 5th, 11th and 24th Tank Brigades and the tank regiments had T-55s. The 220 T-62s were put in reserve storage. In 1992 another 100 T-72s and 100 BMP-1s were received second-hand from Russia, went to the 24th Tank Brigade. The five tank brigades ( 9th Tank Brigade at Gorna Banya in Sofia, in the 1st Army, 5th and 11th in the 2nd Army and

6678-714: The Army of the Kingdom of Bulgaria was the Armoured Brigade, based in Sofia and armed with German equipment. After the end of the Second World War and the signing of the Paris peace treaty by Bulgaria in 1947, the Soviet Union began to strengthen the armed forces of its new satellite state. In addition to the Armoured Brigade a new tank regiment was formed in Samokov with 65 T-34 tanks (in 1947) and an armoured troops school

6804-488: The Army of the Kingdom of Bulgaria was the Armoured Brigade, based in Sofia and armed with German equipment. In addition to the Armoured Brigade a new tank regiment was formed in Samokov with 65 T-34 tanks (in 1947) and an armoured troops school was formed in Botevgrad (in 1950). The formation of the 1st Tank Division also started in Kazanlak in 1947 with T-34s, only to be disbanded in 1949 with its four tank regiments to be converted into tank brigades and subordinated to

6930-485: The Army-level brigades, while the frontal brigade was armed with the R-400 Oka , plus logistic, maintenance, chemical defence, medical, security, and signal units The three army artillery regiments each had 3x Field Artillery Divizions, with 18x towed 122mm M-30 howitzers; a Long Range Artillery Divizion, with 18x towed 130mm M-46 howitzers; a Heavy Howitzer Artillery Divizion, with 18x towed 122mm ML-20 howitzers (Were being replaced with towed 152mm D-20 howitzers in

7056-576: The Cyrillic alphabet - А, Б, В, Г ) and Tank. These formations were assigned to the following force structure: Main Staff of the Land Forces (Sofia) (Land Forces Command until January 1, 1996), converts to Field Army Headquarters in case of war In the 1996-97 period the force concept was changed again. The Land Forces were to be composed of two army corps (1st and 3rd Army Corps), Quick Reaction Forces (the former 2nd Army Corps), two mechanised divisions (15th and 18th) and combat, combat support and combat service support formations and units subordinated to

7182-522: The IISS estimated that ground units operated a total of 2,100 tanks (200 T-72 and 1,500 T-54/55) though later estimates have raised the figure to 2,550. There were no Soviet forces present in the country. The eight motor rifle divisions did not all have the same structure. Four had a tank regiment and three motor rifle regiments and four divisions fielded four motor rifle regiments. Also the two training/reserve divisions (18th, 21st) were partially equipped with older equipment. The only armoured formation in

7308-1052: The Land Forces are a volunteer force. Bulgarian Land Forces troops are deployed on peacekeeping missions in Afghanistan , Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo . Since 2004, the Land Forces are in a process of continued restructuring. Under the most recent reform, brigades were reduced to regiments, while several garrisons and brigades were disbanded. The Land Forces are functionally divided into 'Active" and "Reserve Forces". Their main functions include deterrence, defense, peace support and crisis management , humanitarian and rescue missions, as well as social functions within Bulgarian society. The Active Forces mainly have peacekeeping and defensive duties, and are further divided into Deployment Forces, Immediate Reaction, and Main Defense Forces. The Reserve Forces consists of Enhancement Forces, Territorial Defense Forces, and Training Grounds. They deal with planning and reservist preparation, armaments and equipment storage, training of formations for active forces rotation or increase in personnel. During peacetime

7434-592: The Land Forces maintain permanent combat and mobilization readiness. They become part of multinational military formations in compliance with international treaties Bulgaria is a Party of, participate in the preparation of the population, the national economy and the maintenance of wartime reserves and the infrastructure of the country for defense. In times of crisis the Land Forces' main tasks relate to participation in operations countering terrorist activities and defense of strategic facilities (such as nuclear power plants and major industrial facilities), assisting

7560-460: The Land Forces was as follows: Land Forces Command - Sofia At the end of 1990 the Ground Forces' combat formations included 4 combat-ready motor rifle divisions (the 2nd, 3rd, 7th and 17th), 4 combat-ready tank brigades (5th, 9th, 13th and 24th), 4 territorial training centers active during peacetime to convert to motor rifle divisions during wartime (1st, 16th, 18th and 21st) and 2 motor rifle divisions to activate in case of war (15th MRD based on

7686-436: The Land Forces, together with the Air Force and the Navy , aim at countering aggression and protection of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the country. On 22 July 1878 (10 July O.S.) twelve battalions of opalchentsi who participated in the Liberation War, formed the Bulgarian Armed Forces. According to the Tarnovo Constitution , all men between 21 and 40 years of age were eligible for military service. In 1883

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7812-411: The Main Staff of the LF: 1st Army Corps had the task to defend the state border from Kom Peak through Tumba Peak to Zlatograd . 3rd Army Corps had the border from Zlatograd to Cape Emine under its responsibility. 15th Mechanised Division covered the state border from Kom Peak, through the Timok river to the town of Svishtov . The 18th Mechanised Division closed the circle with the task to defend

7938-413: The People's School for Reserve Officers in Pleven and the 68th based on the People's Higher Military School in Veliko Tarnovo). This army structure was the starting point for the reforms that followed in the 1990s. The first big change in the force structure was the result of the end of the Cold War. The war plans of the Bulgarian People's Army were fully in line with the understanding of the BPA as part of

8064-416: The Red Wall was marked with the total defeat of the French forces, with 5,700 out of six thousand men killed. The 261 Frenchmen who survived were captured by Bulgarian soldiers. Out of a 4.5 million population, Bulgaria fielded 1,200,000 people in its army. Even this vast expansion of the military could not save Bulgaria from the imminent defeat of its patron Germany. The Allied breakthrough at Dobro Pole and

8190-403: The U.S. Army, lawyers who are not already officers at captain rank or above enter as lieutenants during training, and are promoted to the rank of captain after completion of their training if they are in the active component, or after a certain amount of time, usually one year from their date of commission as a lieutenant, for the reserve components. The rank of captain should not be confused with

8316-434: The Warsaw Pact. The anticipated war was a massive conflict between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, which the BPA would fight with the support its WP allies - the Soviet Army and the Romanian People's Army. The whole of North Bulgaria was the rear area of the planned Balkan Front and the combat formations were concentrated mostly against Turkey and Greece. With the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact the alliance between Bulgaria and Romania

8442-402: The ballistic missile systems of the land forces and the coastal anti-ship missile systems of the Navy, as well as transforming the operational units of the Land Forces into smaller, more nimble and flexible formations. The force structure in 2002 was the following: Main Staff of the Land Forces (Sofia) In case of war the 1st and 3rd Corps Reserve Commands mobilise into 1st and 3rd Army Corps,

8568-468: The battalion level the total was 69 mechanised, 47 tank and 77 artillery battalions of various types (self-propelled and towed gun and howitzer, anti-tank, ballistic missile, MLRS and ATGM). Peacetime manpower was set at 51 852 people (out of a total of ca. 90 000 for the entire Bulgarian Army). In case of war the country planned to field Ground Forces of 250 000. The combat brigades were also put in five readiness categories - A, B, V, G (first four letters of

8694-626: The border from Svishtov to Cape Emine. Each army corps was to be composed of 3 - 4 mechanised brigades, 1 - 2 tank brigades, 2 mixed artillery brigades (1 active in peacetime), a separate ballistic missile battalion and a separate artillery reconnaissance battalion, anti-air artillery brigade, anti-tank regiments (2 in 1st Army Corps, a single one in 3rd Army Corps), an engineer / line of communications regiment, an electronic warfare battalion, 2 nuclear, chemical, biological defence and ecology battalions (1 active in peacetime) and various signals, topographic, logistical and medical units. Each mechanised division

8820-401: The combat formations and units in this force structure amounted to 13 mechanised, 1 light infantry and 4 tank brigades, a separate mountain infantry regiment and a separate mechanised battalion. This force structure had an implementation deadline until September 1, 2000, and leaned on a personnel requirement of 5 880 officers, 8 463 NCOs and ca. 20 000 ranks to a grand total of 34 342 personnel in

8946-412: The completion of the action of the verb and form past perfective (aorist) forms; imperfective ones are neutral with regard to it and form past imperfective forms. Most Bulgarian verbs can be grouped in perfective-imperfective pairs (imperfective/perfective: идвам/дойда "come", пристигам/пристигна "arrive"). Perfective verbs can be usually formed from imperfective ones by suffixation or prefixation, but

9072-613: The different arms would mobilize. With Bulgaria's accession to the Warsaw Pact on 14 May 1955, a new stage commenced. The Land Forces operated 800 tanks and had a formidable artillery corps. In 1963 the Bulgarian People's Army peacetime strength was set at no less than 100,000 men, with four motor rifle divisions (including the 1st Division, bg:Първа мотострелкова дивизия ), the 16th Mountain Brigade had been upgraded into

9198-472: The early 1920s army officers participated in repressions during the Tsankov regime as part of paramilitary groups known as shpitskomandi . In 1923 the army, along with shpitskomandi and Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) militia, violently suppressed the leftist September Uprising . Two years later Bulgarian troops stopped a short-lived Greek invasion of southwestern Bulgaria, known as

9324-564: The eastern dialects prevailed, and in 1899 the Bulgarian Ministry of Education officially codified a standard Bulgarian language based on the Drinov-Ivanchev orthography. Bulgarian is the official language of Bulgaria , where it is used in all spheres of public life. As of 2011, it is spoken as a first language by about 6   million people in the country, or about four out of every five Bulgarian citizens. There

9450-439: The elimination of case declension , the development of a suffixed definite article , and the lack of a verb infinitive . They retain and have further developed the Proto-Slavic verb system (albeit analytically). One such major development is the innovation of evidential verb forms to encode for the source of information: witnessed, inferred, or reported. It is the official language of Bulgaria , and since 2007 has been among

9576-620: The end of 1955 the Bulgarian Land Forces had a peacetime structure of two armies and two independent rifle corps, made up of a total of 9 rifle divisions and 14 other formations. The 16th Mountain Rifle Brigade had been established in 1950 with its headquarters in Zvezdets, being given the old number of the 16th Infantry Division. In addition to that in a case of war five additional rifle divisions and 9 other formations of

9702-462: The first war, and the majority of Bulgaria's forces were deployed along the Ottoman border. During the war, Bulgaria fought against all its neighbours, including Romania , which did not participate in the first war. The 500,000-man Bulgarian army faced a total of 1,250,000 enemy troops from all sides. Supply and coordination problems and the overwhelming numbers of the attackers brought about an end to

9828-468: The formations and units was to occur during the first (between 1995 and 1997) and second phases (between 1997 and 2000), while the third beyond the target date had focus on the modernisation of the armament and equipment). In the same year 1992 the decision to downgrade 2nd Army from a peacetime combat-ready formation like the 1st and 3rd Armies to a mainly training formation was reverted and the 17th Motor Rifle Division returned to being subordinated to it from

9954-544: The group of the verb or the verbal group. Nouns and adjectives have the categories grammatical gender , number , case (only vocative ) and definiteness in Bulgarian. Adjectives and adjectival pronouns agree with nouns in number and gender. Pronouns have gender and number and retain (as in nearly all Indo-European languages ) a more significant part of the case system. There are three grammatical genders in Bulgarian: masculine , feminine and neuter . The gender of

10080-510: The help of then Prime Minister of Bavaria Franz Josef Strauss proved unsuccessful. Thus even before the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the rapid disintegration of the socialist economic and military block, the Bulgarian People's Army has put in motion plans for forces reduction, caused by budget constrains. In the land forces the main result was the disbanding one tank brigade (out of five) and

10206-489: The historical yat vowel or at least root vowels displaying the ya – e alternation. The letter was used in each occurrence of such a root, regardless of the actual pronunciation of the vowel: thus, both ml ya ko and ml e kar were spelled with (Ѣ). Among other things, this was seen as a way to "reconcile" the Western and the Eastern dialects and maintain language unity at a time when much of Bulgaria's Western dialect area

10332-524: The land forces. After the severe economic crisis during the Videnov Government (overthrown by mass protests) the country took a path of European integration and economic recovery. It set up the goals to become a member of NATO and the European Union. The reduction of the armed forces continued with the center pieces of the defence policy being close co-operation with NATO members and candidate states, divestment of labor-intensive systems, such as

10458-725: The language), and presumably a significant proportion of the 13,200 ethnic Bulgarians residing in neighbouring Transnistria in 2016. Another community abroad are the Banat Bulgarians , who migrated in the 17th century to the Banat region now split between Romania, Serbia and Hungary. They speak the Banat Bulgarian dialect , which has had its own written standard and a historically important literary tradition. There are Bulgarian speakers in neighbouring countries as well. The regional dialects of Bulgarian and Macedonian form

10584-576: The language, but its pronunciation is in many respects a compromise between East and West Bulgarian (see especially the phonetic sections below). Following the efforts of some figures of the National awakening of Bulgaria (most notably Neofit Rilski and Ivan Bogorov ), there had been many attempts to codify a standard Bulgarian language; however, there was much argument surrounding the choice of norms. Between 1835 and 1878 more than 25 proposals were put forward and "linguistic chaos" ensued. Eventually

10710-409: The late 1980s); and logistic, maintenance, chemical defence, medical, security, and signal units. The three army anti-tank regiments each comprised three Anti-tank Artillery divizions , with 12x towed 100mm T-12 guns and 6x BRDM-2 vehicles in the anti-tank variant with Konkurs anti-tank missiles, logistic, maintenance, chemical defence, medical, security, and signal units. By the second half of

10836-409: The latter. Russian loans are distinguished from Old Bulgarian ones on the basis of the presence of specifically Russian phonetic changes, as in оборот (turnover, rev), непонятен (incomprehensible), ядро (nucleus) and others. Many other loans from French, English and the classical languages have subsequently entered the language as well. Modern Bulgarian was based essentially on the Eastern dialects of

10962-481: The literary norm regarding the yat vowel, many people living in Western Bulgaria, including the capital Sofia , will fail to observe its rules. While the norm requires the realizations vidyal vs. videli (he has seen; they have seen), some natives of Western Bulgaria will preserve their local dialect pronunciation with "e" for all instances of "yat" (e.g. videl , videli ). Others, attempting to adhere to

11088-475: The low vowels / ɛ / , / ɔ / and / a / in unstressed position, sometimes leading to neutralisation between / ɛ / and / i / , / ɔ / and / u / , and / a / and / ɤ / . Both patterns have partial parallels in Russian, leading to partially similar sounds. In turn, the Western dialects generally do not have any allophonic palatalization and exhibit minor, if any, vowel reduction. Standard Bulgarian keeps

11214-399: The masculine ones usually have –и for polysyllables and –ове for monosyllables (however, exceptions are especially common in this group). Nouns ending in –о/–е (most of which are neuter) mostly use the suffixes –а, –я (both of which require the dropping of the singular endings) and –та . With cardinal numbers and related words such as няколко ('several'), masculine nouns use

11340-467: The military was reorganized in four infantry brigades (in Sofia, Pleven, Ruse and Shumen) and one cavalry brigade . The Bulgarian unification of 1885 made Bulgaria the largest Balkan state in terms of territory, which immediately sparked dissent in Serbia and Greece, which demanded territorial compensations. While the agitation of the Greek side calmed down, Serbia – backed by Austria-Hungary – launched

11466-412: The modular principal of actions the structure is optimised to easily integrate additional supporting units tailored to the actual mission, such as tanks, self-propelled artillery, self-propelled missile air defence units, special forces, heavy engineering, CIMIC etc. Contingency plans envision, that one of the brigades will be fully ready to deploy entirely for operations overseas, while the other, alongside

11592-487: The monarch would sell his commission to another nobleman to command the company. Otherwise, the only pension for the captain was selling the right to another nobleman when he was ready to retire. Many air forces, such as the United States Air Force , use a rank structure and insignia similar to those of the army. However, the United Kingdom 's Royal Air Force , many other Commonwealth air forces and

11718-477: The most significant exception from the above are the relatively numerous nouns that end in a consonant and yet are feminine: these comprise, firstly, a large group of nouns with zero ending expressing quality, degree or an abstraction, including all nouns ending on –ост/–ест -{ost/est} ( мъдрост /ˈmɤdrost/ 'wisdom', низост /ˈnizost/ 'vileness', прелест /ˈprɛlɛst/ 'loveliness', болест /ˈbɔlɛst/ 'sickness', любов /ljuˈbɔf/ 'love'), and secondly,

11844-581: The new Mountain Infantry Regiment, assumes the armed forces' paramount mission of defending the territorial integrity of the country. The rank insignia of commissioned officers . The rank insignia of non-commissioned officers and enlisted personnel . Bulgarian language Rup Moesian Bulgarian ( / b ʌ l ˈ ɡ ɛər i ə n / , / b ʊ l ˈ -/ bu(u)l- GAIR -ee-ən ; български език , bŭlgarski ezik , pronounced [ˈbɤɫɡɐrski] )

11970-572: The newspaper Makedoniya : "Such an artificial assembly of written language is something impossible, unattainable and never heard of." After 1944 the People's Republic of Bulgaria and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia began a policy of making Macedonia into the connecting link for the establishment of a new Balkan Federative Republic and stimulating here a development of distinct Macedonian consciousness. With

12096-447: The norm, will actually use the "ya" sound even in cases where the standard language has "e" (e.g. vidyal , vidyali ). The latter hypercorrection is called свръхякане ( svrah-yakane ≈"over- ya -ing"). Bulgarian is the only Slavic language whose literary standard does not naturally contain the iotated e /jɛ/ (or its variant, e after a palatalized consonant /ʲɛ/ , except in non-Slavic foreign-loaned words). This sound combination

12222-659: The noun can largely be inferred from its ending: nouns ending in a consonant ("zero ending") are generally masculine (for example, град /ɡrat/ 'city', син /sin/ 'son', мъж /mɤʃ/ 'man'; those ending in –а/–я (-a/-ya) ( жена /ʒɛˈna/ 'woman', дъщеря /dɐʃtɛrˈja/ 'daughter', улица /ˈulitsɐ/ 'street') are normally feminine; and nouns ending in –е, –о are almost always neuter ( дете /dɛˈtɛ/ 'child', езеро /ˈɛzɛro/ 'lake'), as are those rare words (usually loanwords) that end in –и, –у, and –ю ( цунами /tsuˈnami/ ' tsunami ', табу /tɐˈbu/ 'taboo', меню /mɛˈnju/ 'menu'). Perhaps

12348-994: The noun they are appended to. They may also take the definite article as explained above. Pronouns may vary in gender, number, and definiteness, and are the only parts of speech that have retained case inflections. Three cases are exhibited by some groups of pronouns – nominative, accusative and dative. The distinguishable types of pronouns include the following: personal, relative, reflexive, interrogative, negative, indefinitive, summative and possessive. A Bulgarian verb has many distinct forms, as it varies in person, number, voice, aspect, mood, tense and in some cases gender. Finite verbal forms are simple or compound and agree with subjects in person (first, second and third) and number (singular, plural). In addition to that, past compound forms using participles vary in gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) and voice (active and passive) as well as aspect (perfective/aorist and imperfective). Bulgarian verbs express lexical aspect : perfective verbs signify

12474-473: The official languages of the European Union . It is also spoken by the Bulgarian historical communities in North Macedonia , Ukraine , Moldova , Serbia , Romania , Hungary , Albania and Greece . One can divide the development of the Bulgarian language into several periods. Bulgarian was the first Slavic language attested in writing. As Slavic linguistic unity lasted into late antiquity,

12600-470: The oldest manuscripts initially referred to this language as ѧзꙑкъ словѣньскъ, "the Slavic language". In the Middle Bulgarian period this name was gradually replaced by the name ѧзꙑкъ блъгарьскъ, the "Bulgarian language". In some cases, this name was used not only with regard to the contemporary Middle Bulgarian language of the copyist but also to the period of Old Bulgarian. A most notable example of anachronism

12726-419: The only branch of the Bulgarian military. The Land Forces were made up of conscripts throughout most of Bulgaria's history. During World War I , it fielded more than one million troops out of Bulgaria's total population of around four million. Two-year conscription was obligatory during Communism (1946–1990), but its term was reduced in the 1990s. Conscription for all branches was terminated in 2008; since then,

12852-536: The operational reserve of 160 T-72M1 tanks and many other armoured vehicles. The plan for the mechanised brigades is for each of them to have three battalion battlegroups. Although the first three battalion battlegroups are already formed the MoD disclosed very little information about their actual structure. What little is known is, that each of them will have three rifle companies and integral fire and engineer support (including EOD disposal). In addition to that, according to

12978-429: The past pluperfect subjunctive. Perfect constructions use a single auxiliary "be". The traditional interpretation is that in addition to the four moods (наклонения /nəkloˈnɛnijɐ/ ) shared by most other European languages – indicative (изявително, /izʲəˈvitɛɫno/ ) imperative (повелително /poveˈlitelno/ ), subjunctive ( подчинително /pottʃiˈnitɛɫno/ ) and conditional (условно, /oˈsɫɔvno/ ) – in Bulgarian there

13104-604: The pockets of speakers of the related regional dialects in Albania and in Greece variously identify their language as Macedonian or as Bulgarian. In Serbia , there were 13,300 speakers as of 2011, mainly concentrated in the so-called Western Outlands along the border with Bulgaria. Bulgarian is also spoken in Turkey: natively by Pomaks , and as a second language by many Bulgarian Turks who emigrated from Bulgaria, mostly during

13230-402: The previous holder of that right. He would in turn receive money from another nobleman to serve as his lieutenant . The funding to provide for the troops did not come from the monarch or their government; the captain responsible for feeding, housing, and provisioning their company. If he was unable to support the company, or was otherwise court-martialed, he would be dismissed (" cashiered "), and

13356-648: The proclamation of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia as part of the Yugoslav federation, the new authorities also started measures that would overcome the pro-Bulgarian feeling among parts of its population and in 1945 a separate Macedonian language was codified. After 1958, when the pressure from Moscow decreased, Sofia reverted to the view that the Macedonian language did not exist as a separate language. Nowadays, Bulgarian and Greek linguists, as well as some linguists from other countries, still consider

13482-466: The resultant verb often deviates in meaning from the original. In the pair examples above, aspect is stem-specific and therefore there is no difference in meaning. In Bulgarian, there is also grammatical aspect . Three grammatical aspects are distinguishable: neutral, perfect and pluperfect. The neutral aspect comprises the three simple tenses and the future tense. The pluperfect is manifest in tenses that use double or triple auxiliary "be" participles like

13608-452: The retired Soviet tanks were added. In 1950 two new tank divisions were formed (in Sofia and Kazanlak), but with the technological advancements and the increase in weight and dimensions of the tanks at that time after an evaluation it was decided, that the predominantly mountainous terrain of Bulgaria was unsuitable for the deployment of tank divisions, and the Bulgarian Land Forces reorganised their tank forces into brigades and regiments. At

13734-481: The security forces in preventing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction , illegal armaments traffic and international terrorism. In case of low- and medium-intensity military conflict the Active Forces that are part of the Land Forces participate in carrying out the initial tasks for the defense of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the country. In case of a military conflict of high intensity

13860-525: The singular ones, but may also provide some clues to it: the ending –и (-i) is more likely to be used with a masculine or feminine noun ( факти /ˈfakti/ 'facts', болести /ˈbɔlɛsti/ 'sicknesses'), while one in –а/–я belongs more often to a neuter noun ( езера /ɛzɛˈra/ 'lakes'). Also, the plural ending –ове /ovɛ/ occurs only in masculine nouns. Two numbers are distinguished in Bulgarian– singular and plural . A variety of plural suffixes

13986-428: The standard Bulgarian language, however, did not wish to make any allowances for a pluricentric "Bulgaro-Macedonian" compromise. In 1870 Marin Drinov , who played a decisive role in the standardization of the Bulgarian language, rejected the proposal of Parteniy Zografski and Kuzman Shapkarev for a mixed eastern and western Bulgarian/Macedonian foundation of the standard Bulgarian language, stating in his article in

14112-424: The subsequent soldier mutiny at Vladaya completely disrupted the war effort in 1918. Bulgaria capitulated soon after these events. Bulgarian casualties amounted to 412,000, along with 253,000 refugees created from the lost territories. During the interbellum the Bulgarian military was not allowed to have active combat aircraft or naval vessels, and the army was reduced to about twenty thousand men in peacetime. In

14238-466: The tank regiments with T-55s. The 220 T-62s put in reserve storage. In 1992 another 100 T-72s and 100 BMP-1s received second-hand from Russia, went to the 24th Tank Brigade. The five active tank brigades (9th in the 1st Army, 5th and 11th in the 2nd Army and 13th and 24th in the 3rd Army) were organized as follows – three Tank Battalions, with T-72 main battle tanks or T-55 ; a motor rifle battalion, with BMP-23 infantry fighting vehicles or BMP-1 ;

14364-404: The transformation of four motor rifle divisions (out of eight) into territorial training centers during peacetime (with personnel in the 1 100 - 1 300 range). At the same time the 2nd Army lost its status as a combat formation during peacetime altogether, with its area of responsibility split between the 1st and the 3rd Army. By the end of 1989 and the beginning of 1990 the general force structure of

14490-484: The various Macedonian dialects as part of the broader Bulgarian pluricentric dialectal continuum . Outside Bulgaria and Greece, Macedonian is generally considered an autonomous language within the South Slavic dialect continuum. Sociolinguists agree that the question whether Macedonian is a dialect of Bulgarian or a language is a political one and cannot be resolved on a purely linguistic basis, because dialect continua do not allow for either/or judgements. In 886 AD,

14616-535: The verb class. The possible existence of a few other moods has been discussed in the literature. Most Bulgarian school grammars teach the traditional view of 4 Bulgarian moods (as described above, but excluding the subjunctive and including the inferential). There are three grammatically distinctive positions in time – present, past and future – which combine with aspect and mood to produce a number of formations. Normally, in grammar books these formations are viewed as separate tenses – i. e. "past imperfect" would mean that

14742-544: The verb is in past tense, in the imperfective aspect, and in the indicative mood (since no other mood is shown). There are more than 40 different tenses across Bulgarian's two aspects and five moods. Captain (OF-2) In some militaries, such as United States Army and Air Force and the British Army, captain is the entry-level rank for officer candidates possessing a professional degree, namely, most medical professionals (doctors, pharmacists, dentists) and lawyers. In

14868-683: The war in less than two months. The outcome of the Balkan Wars sparked a very strong revanchist sentiment among Bulgarians. In 1915 Germany promised to restore the boundaries according to the Treaty of San Stefano and Bulgaria, which had the largest army in the Balkans, declared war on Serbia in October the same year. In the First World War Bulgaria decisively asserted its military capabilities. The Second Battle of Doiran , with general Vladimir Vazov as commander, inflicted

14994-461: The yat alternation in almost all Eastern dialects that have it (except a few dialects along the yat border, e.g. in the Pleven region). More examples of the yat umlaut in the literary language are: Until 1945, Bulgarian orthography did not reveal this alternation and used the original Old Slavic Cyrillic letter yat (Ѣ), which was commonly called двойно е ( dvoyno e ) at the time, to express

15120-430: Was controlled by Serbia and Greece , but there were still hopes and occasional attempts to recover it. With the 1945 orthographic reform, this letter was abolished and the present spelling was introduced, reflecting the alternation in pronunciation. This had implications for some grammatical constructions: Sometimes, with the changes, words began to be spelled as other words with different meanings, e.g.: In spite of

15246-419: Was decided, that the predominantly mountainous terrain of Bulgaria is unsuitable for the deployment of tank divisions and the Bulgarian Land Forces reformed their tank forces into brigades and regiments. 333 Т-72s of Soviet and Czechoslovak manufacture delivered until the collapse of the Socialist bloc and spread between the 9th and 13th tank brigades and training centers. The 5th, 11th and 24th tank brigades and

15372-555: Was formed in Botevgrad (in 1950). A formation of 1st Tank Division also started in Kazanlak in 1947 with T-34s, only to be disbanded in 1949 with its four tank regiments to be converted into tank brigades and subordinated to the 1st, 2nd, 3rd Army and the General Reserve respectively. The front line infantry divisions started forming tank battalions (one each) and several hundred trophy German tanks were transferred to Bulgaria to form

15498-431: Was militarily the most powerful of the four states, with a large, well-trained and well-equipped army. The peacetime force of 60,000 men was expanded during the war to 370,000 (more than half of the League's total of 700,000 troops), with almost 600,000 men mobilised in total, out of a population of 4,300,000. The field army counted for 9 infantry divisions, 1 cavalry division and 1,116 artillery units. Bulgarian troops marked

15624-652: Was nullified. Combined with the outbreak of the Yugoslav Wars this meant that the country had to plan for defence in all directions, while the difficult economic situation meant, that it could no longer maintain the big military budget of the previous period. So in 1992 a new Concept for the Development of the Bulgarian Army Until the Year 2000 (to be implemented in three phases, the re-structuring of

15750-401: Was the main tool in imposing a policy of relocation, and expulsion of the local Greek population in the occupied areas. By late 1941, more than one hundred thousand Greeks had been expelled from the Bulgarian occupation zone. Increasing attacks by partisans in the latter years of the occupation resulted in a number of executions and wholesale slaughter of civilians in reprisal. In September, 1944,

15876-604: Was to be composed of 2 mechanised brigades, an artillery regiment, an anti-air artillery regiment, anti-tank, reconnaissance, combat engineer, NCBDE and a signals battalions. Directly subordinated to the Main Staff of the Land Forces were two ballistic missile brigades, anti-tank brigade, missile air defence brigade, combat engineer brigade and other engineer units, NCBDE brigade, airborne reconnaissance and direct action regiment, electronic warfare regiment, PsyOps battalion, two UAV air squadrons and other support units. All in all

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