A round table on enhancing national resilience was held at the Military Academy in Sofia, according to the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA).Defence Minister Atanas Zapryanov opened the forum saying that the State of Defence 2024 report and the report on the implementation of the Defence Investment Programme until 2032 have already been submitted to the National Assembly.
The event is attended by representatives of NATO, various ministries, academia and the private sector. US Embassy in Bulgaria's Chargé d'Affaires ad interim Susan Falatko was a guest speaker at the roundtable. Here's what was said within the panel on perspectives on sustainability.
NATO resilience department deputy director Rebecca Eastwick-Haskell spoke of the complexity of today's security environment, as well as the need to ensure and continue resilience efforts. She said that NATO is currently experiencing the greatest collective strengthening in decades. She said creating resilience is not just the job of the armed forces, but in a catastrophic event, requires the efforts of the entire population. The NATO representative gave the example of Ukraine, which after the war had to rely on all civilian structures to keep society functioning. Foreign Ministry's ambassador-at-large for resilience building Irena Dimitrova spoke about countering the malicious spread of information. She pointed out that a training manual has been developed that allows government officials, NGO representatives, and others to be trained on basic skills to counter this type of information. According to her, positive presentation and promotion of institutions' activities to the public can prevent negative effects in a crisis on state structures.
