The government will try to keep the budget deficit at 3%. It will set out an official position on the drones that hit ships in the Black Sea once the investigation ends, deputy prime minister Ivo Hristov said on BNT's "The Day Begins" programme.

The deficit is the gap between what the state earns and what it spends. Hristov hopes to reach 3%, but first parliament must debate the budget and other changes must be seen.

He does not favour strict limits on the deficit and noted that hardly any country in Europe keeps it at 3%.

The draft budget raises pensions by 8% and public sector pay by 5%. It also plans higher pay for teachers but gives no percentage. The deputy prime minister said the rises should not be handed out at random and should help those hit hardest.

Hristov said it is logical for the drones to be Russian, judging by which ships were hit. He stressed that a comment made without political responsibility is not the same as an official position, and that he cannot comment on theories that have not been proven.

Hristov called those who press the government to declare the drones Russian before this is established "hysterics". He asked whether they expect NATO's Article 5 to be invoked and whether they are sure that would happen. The presenters pointed out that the demand is for Article 4.

Hristov told BNT: "All NATO countries fear the invoking of Article 4 and Article 5. Because it is a step towards escalation into war." He doubts that either article serves Bulgarian and European interests.

Bulgarian politicians must be realistic about the war that Russia started against Ukraine with its full-scale invasion in February 2022, the deputy prime minister said. He said they must always oppose it and its escalation. He himself is against dragging Bulgaria into other countries' geopolitical clashes and against fighting the war to the bitter end. He said President Rumen Radev once called that argument untenable.

"We are against sending weapons to Ukraine, against continuing the slaughter and bloodshed," Hristov said.

He said the end of the war that Russia started against Ukraine will not be good for Europe. Battlefield reports are public, he said, while the comments of "our home-grown propagandists and scribblers" paint everything rosy, which is not the case. Asked whether he expects Russia to win, Hristov answered with a question: does anyone expect Ukraine to win? Russia is the country that attacked Ukraine in February 2022.

Under the proposal for a Black Sea moratorium, all hostile military action must stop. Hristov thinks this will not happen all at once. He said that even if attacks on ships in the Black Sea stop, an unlimited number of mines will remain in the water, and clearing them will take years.

Sunken ships cause many environmental problems, and the high insurance risk keeps shipping firms from sailing in the Black Sea. The deputy prime minister said nobody will come to clear mines in Bulgaria's place.

Hristov said the wave of vandalism in France will hit insurers across Europe, above all in France, and will affect deficits. The unrest there was to some extent expected, he said, because tension has been building for the past 20 years.

Hristov traces its start to the elite shutting itself off, and to social policy turning into a fight by the elite against everyone who is unhappy. He said France will struggle to find a prime minister willing to govern amid the current imbalance.