53-year-old Ventsislav Vasilev – the third man in Bulgaria to set himself on fire as a means of protest in the recent days – is in an "extremely critical condition", announced the administration of the St. George Hospital in Plovdiv announced.

Vasilev, a father of five, set himself on fire in the municipality building in the southern Bulgarian town of Radnevo last week because his family lived in extreme poverty.

He was later revealed to have borrowed BGN 3 in order to buy the gasoline to set himself on fire.

Vasilev was hospitalized with 70% burns last Tuesday; he was supposed to have a surgery on Monday but as soon as it started he fell clinically dead, and had to be reanimated, with the doctors barely managing to bring him back to life.

Earlier on Monday, Plamen Goranov already known as the Bulgarian Jan Palach, who set himself on fire on February 20, 2013, in front of Varna's municipality, in protest against local mayor Kiril Yordanov and his alleged ties with the TIM business group, passed away.

Before that, on February 19, a middle-aged man set himself on fire in the northern city of Veliko Tarnovo, allegedly out of desperation for living in utter poverty.