Bulgaria's Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Milen Keremedchiev opened Thursday the renovated building of the Bulgarian consulate in the Ukrainian Black Sea City of Odessa.

The new consular office meets all requirements of the Schengen Agreement. In addition, its capacity to process visa requests is now greater with five counters in place of the only two service counters that existed previously.

Keremedchiev pointed out the number of Ukrainian citizens applying for Bulgarian visas had increased by 30% over the last year.

In his words, representatives of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry had commented that Bulgaria had the most modern consulate in the city of Odessa, where Russia, Belarus, Poland, Greece, Turkey, France, and South Africa also have consular offices.

A historic minority of about 170 000 ethnic Bulgarians lives in the Ukrainian port of Odessa, and the Bulgarian consulate there is traditionally active among them.

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