BULGARIA ( Република България )

Bulgaria ( Bulgarian: България), officially the Republic of Bulgaria (Bulgarian: Република България,), is a country in Southeastern Europe. It is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, and the Black Sea to the east. The capital and largest city is Sofia; other major cities are Plovdiv, Varna and Burgas. With a territory of 110,994 square kilometres (42,855 sq mi), Bulgaria is Europe's sixteenth-largest country. Since adopting a democratic constitution in 1991, the sovereign state has been a unitary parliamentary republic with a high degree of political, administrative, and economic centralisation. The population of seven million resides mainly in Sofia and the capital cities of the 27 provinces. The population has declined since the late 1980s.

Bulgaria occupies a portion of the eastern Balkan peninsula, bordering five countries—Greece and Turkey to the south, Macedonia and Serbia to the west, and Romania to the north. The land borders have a total length of 1,808 kilometres (1,123 mi), and the coastline has a length of 354 kilometres (220 mi).

Bulgaria liberated itself from the Ottoman Empire in 1878 and, although it remained de jure autonomous until the proclamation of full independence in 1908, it acted as a de facto independent country. From 1879, stamps were issued in Bulgarian Cyrillic script and some of the stamps—such as those issued in 1901—commemorated the 25th anniversary of the April Uprising against the Turks and, in 1902, celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Battle of Shipka. Bulgaria become a de jure independent state in 1908, even though early stamps issued in the 1910s still depicted Tsar Ferdinand and Tsar Boris III. 

The Bulgarian Posts (Български пощи,) are the national postal service of Bulgaria. The company was founded after the Liberation of Bulgaria from Ottoman rule, as the Russians handed all the post and telegraph offices to the newly restored Bulgarian state on 14 May 1879. Bulgaria was accepted into the Universal Postal Union on 1 July 1879.