Bulgaria's Prime Minister Boyko Borisov drove his Russian counterpart to despair during their first meeting in Poland Tuesday.

This is stated in an article of the Moscow newspaper Kommersant (in Russian), mocking the attitude, looks, and manners of the Bulgarian Prime Minister.

The author of the article entitled "Vladimir Putin Gave Boyko Borisov Thousands [of Kilometers] to Think about" is journalist Andrei Kolesnikov, who is the author of several books about Putin.

According to Kolesnikov, at the end of a long, exhausting day in which 20 state leaders marked the 70th year since the start of World War II, Putin had to wait for Borisov, who was not only late for the meeting but on his way to the Russian Prime Minister, saw an acquaintance of his, and stopped to greet him and give him a hug totally breaking all protocol rules.

This showed the meeting was going to be a hard one, Kommersant writes. The article also mocks Bulgaria's history saying that Putin gave Borisov such a harsh ultimatum to decide on the construction of the Burgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline that he literally threatened to "give Shipka back to the Turks". (The Shipka Pass in the Balkan Mountain is the site of the most critical battle of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, which led to Bulgaria's Liberation from the Ottoman Empire. The battle was fought mostly by Bulgarian volunteers together with two Russian regiments against overwhelming Ottoman forces. - editor's note).

Kommersant writes that Borisov had a hard time fitting in his chair, and that he had the face of a sportsman who was not used to asking and answering questions. Yet, the Bulgarian Prime Minister is said to have actually turned out to be very verbose.

The article points out that Putin was extremely surprised by Borisov's words that his government had no detailed information on the energy projects; he found it unfathomable how it was possible that the Borisov government wouldn't be able to find the actual contracts for the energy treaties in the cabinet offices.

At this point Putin is said to have frozen in his seat like a "lead soldier", and Borisov started to twirl around in his chair.

The article points out that the Russian leadership had made final agreements with the previous Bulgarian government (of PM Stanishev) about the construction of Burgas-Alexandroupolis, and there were no issues. And it had become obvious that the Russian Prime Minister was now driven to despair over the prospects of having to start the negotiations for the oil pipeline from scratch with the new Bulgarian government, after they had already dragged for seven years.

On top of that, the articles goes, the other downside was that in that scenario Putin would have to wait for an unknown period of time "until the Bulgarian colleagues understand that this is also in their interest, and say a simple, human "thank you".

Putin is said to have contrasted the dragging of Burgas Alexandroupolis project, which is only 280 km long, to the thousands of kilometers of pipelines that the Russians had built in no time in the Far East - to China.

At that point, the Bulgarian PM Borisov is said to have remained silent. This even caused Putin's interpreter to forget to translate Putin's last words.

"I am the one that needs to fall asleep after everything that happened today, not you," the interpreter probably thought regarding the Bulgarian Prime Minister, according to the Kommersant article.

In the same articles, the Moscow paper also announces it had information that during their recent negotiations, Putin discussed Burgas-Alexandroupolis with Turkey's PM Erdogan, and the two reached a preliminary agreement that the oil would not go through Bulgaria and Greece but through Turkey, through another route. "And Vladimir Putin actually was not in such a despair because of the new approach of the new Bulgarian government, as one would say."

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