Former Bulgarian President Rumen Radev's center-left Progressive Bulgaria coalition took a commanding lead in Sunday's parliamentary election, according to exit polls and early official returns, putting a left-leaning Eurosceptic who has called for renewed ties with Moscow on a path to become prime minister.

The result would flip the geopolitical direction of an EU country that joined the bloc in 2007 and adopted the euro in January, just one week after Hungarian voters ended Viktor Orban's 16-year rule and elevated the center-leaning Tisza party, and it leaves Brussels facing a new pro-Russian voice inside the bloc rather than a defeated one. Radev, 62, a former fighter pilot and air force commander, resigned the mostly ceremonial presidency in January to run for parliament.

What the polls showed

An exit poll by the Trend research group gave Progressive Bulgaria 39.2 percent and former Prime Minister Boyko Borissov's center-right GERB party 15.1 percent, PBS NewsHour reported through the Associated Press. A separate Sofia-based Alpha Research exit poll, cited by Al Jazeera, put Radev's share at about 44 percent and GERB at 12.5 percent. With 32 percent of ballots counted early Monday, Progressive Bulgaria stood at 44.59 percent, according to preliminary results reported by Al Jazeera.

Turnout was 43.4 percent, the Trend poll said, and six parties were projected to clear the 4 percent threshold for entering parliament. The reformist We Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria coalition, known as PP-DB, was running third.

The coalition math

Even a double-digit lead is unlikely to give Radev a one-party government. He told reporters after the exit poll that he was open to talks with PP-DB or to a minority cabinet.

"We will do everything possible not to allow us to go [to elections] again. It is ruinous for Bulgaria," Radev said, according to Al Jazeera. "We are ready to consider different options so that Bulgaria can have a regular and stable government."

Borissov, whose party ran the conservative-led government that fell in December, conceded nothing. "Elections decide who comes first, but negotiations will decide who governs," he wrote on Facebook.

Sunday's vote was Bulgaria's eighth in five years. No coalition has lasted more than a year since 2021, and the snap election followed the December resignation of the previous conservative-led government amid protests that Al Jazeera and the Associated Press reported drew hundreds of thousands of mostly young demonstrators calling for an independent judiciary and action against corruption.

The Russia question

Radev backed those protests and campaigned against what Al Jazeera quoted him calling the "oligarchic governance model." At rallies he vowed to "remove the corrupt, oligarchic model of governance from political power," according to the Associated Press account carried by PBS NewsHour.

He has also called for renewing ties with Moscow, criticized arms shipments to Ukraine and opposed the 10-year defense agreement Bulgaria signed with Kyiv in March, Al Jazeera reported. Critics have accused him of being too pro-Russian. Bulgaria joined the EU in 2007 and adopted the euro in January.

The counterpoint

Both sources in today's reporting lean center or lean-left, and neither carried a direct response from Borissov's GERB or from EU officials on how Brussels will handle a Radev-led government. Borissov's Facebook post is the only on-the-record objection from the right flank available in the wire copy so far. The seat math also remains a brake on Radev's program: in a fragmented six-party parliament, any coalition partner will have leverage over foreign policy.

What comes next

Official results are still being tallied, and coalition negotiations will begin once the final seat distribution is set. Al Jazeera noted that Bulgarian governments have repeatedly collapsed before completing a year in office since 2021 — the reason Radev told supporters Sunday that a ninth election would be "ruinous."