Two months ago, I wrote that the lazy Western take on Rumen Radev, “the next Orban,” missed the point. Bulgaria already has its Orban, and his name is Boyko Borissov. The better question, I argued, was whether Radev could be our Péter Magyar: the popular outsider who finally breaks the corrupt system from the position of a challenger with a mandate.

He won. A historic result on April 19, then the prime minister’s chair. So now I owe myself the uncomfortable follow-up. Was I wrong?

Partly, yes. The first real test of his foreign policy this week was not encouraging. Radev threatened to veto the EU’s 21st sanctions package over the inclusion of Patriarch Kirill, a Russian cleric and former KGB officer who has spent years blessing the war in Ukraine. “The time of the crusades is over,” the Prime Minister said, defending not the man but the church and, by extension, a sizeable chunk of his electorate. Russian state media lined up to applaud. When TASS and RIA are throwing you a party, you have walked into the wrong room.

So is he Orban after all? Not yet. Orban spent sixteen years building a supermajority, a captured judiciary and a loyal media empire; Radev has none of that. The courts and prosecution he inherited were captured by Borissov, not built by him. His mandate is fresh and his apparatus is thin. Institutionally he is still shaped more like Magyar than Orban, as he does not have the machine, at least not yet.

Here is what bothers me more. Magyar, the comparison I reached for in April, has actually done things. His Hungarian MPs voted to cut their own salaries by 40% and scrap their perks, framed as a “matter of humility.” It is symbolic, sure. But the man is using power for the thing he promised.

And Radev? On the one job he campaigned on, breaking the Borissov-Peevski axis and the mafia state it props up, I see nothing. No prosecutions, no reform. Nothing that looks like he means to touch the system he swore to dismantle. Instead he is spending fresh political capital defending Russians and picking fights with Brussels.

So was I wrong? On the labels yes: he is not Orban and he is not Magyar.

Radev is stalling, and stalling too much. Two months in he looks less like a reformer breaking the system and more like a man who won the keys and decided to repaint the foreign-policy room instead of fixing the foundations.

It is too early to write the verdict. But it is not too early to be disappointed.

Read my original article: HERE