Bulgarian President's 'Gratitude' Post For PM Modi After Indian Navy's Rescue Op Goes Viral

Bulgarian President Rumen Radev’s ‘gratitude’ post to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in praise of the Indian Navy’s heroic rescue of the hijacked Bulgarian Ship ‘Ruen’ and its crew, has gone viral.

Radev’s March 18th post received over 2 million impressions, 25k likes, and 5.4k retweets, making it his most successful post on the platform, previously called Twitter. Before the India post, the second most viewed post of Radev’s account received 57k views, 74 likes and 87 retweets. The majority of his posts received on average less than 100 likes and 10-15 retweets with impressions not exceeding 15k.

‘We conquer Heart and Spread Love’

“We are friends, We don’t conquer territory, We conquer hearts and spread love,” one of the users said in the comments section of the Bulgarian President’s post. “Bulgarian President Thanks India For Rescuing Its Citizens From Hijacked Ship MV Ruen under PM @narendramodi’s leadership,” said another.

Yet another wrote, “Just two all-weather friends, supporting each other in every major crisis, be it COVID or any other military coordination.” One of the Indian users even went ahead and said, “India will make sure everyone follows rules in the Indian Ocean.”

To know more about this, see this tweet https://t.co/UzUqEvvNpo

Last week, the Indian Navy seized MV Ruen, a former Maltese-flagged bulk carrier, rescued 17 hostages, and captured 35 armed pirates in the nearly 40-hour operation around 2,600 km from the Indian coast. High praise for the Indian rescue operation came as defence experts recognised that the dramatic rescue of the commercial ship from pirates off Somalia’s coast shows how India’s military has developed special forces capabilities on par with some of the world’s best.

“The success of the operation marks the Indian Navy as a top-class force in terms of training, command and control and other capabilities,” CNN quoted John Bradford, Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs fellow, as saying. “What marks this operation as impressive is how risk was minimised by using a coordinated force that includes the use of a warship, drones, fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft, and marine commandos,” Bradford said.

(With agency inputs)