Bulgaria and the euro government, notably economy minister Petar Dimitrov, have speculated about unilaterally introducing the euro, which was not well-met by the European Commission. The lev is not part of ERM-II, but since the launch of the euro in 1999, it has been pegged to the euro at a fixed rate of €1 = BGN 1.95583 through a strictly managed currency board. In all of the three latest annual assessment reports, Bulgaria managed to comply with four out of the five economic convergence criteria for euro adoption, only failing to comply with the criteria requiring the currency of the state to have been
Russians in Bulgaria in Silistra Province) in 1674, building a church in 1750. Another Russian-inhabited village in the northeast of Bulgaria is Kazashko in Varna Province, where descendants of Kuban and Don Cossacks have been living since 1905. The members of these Old Believer communities are locally known as Lipovans (липованци, "lipovantsi") and belong to a group also inhabiting Romania and Ukraine. Their main occupation is fishing, in the Danube for the Lipovans in Tataritsa and in Lake Varna for those in Kazashko. Following the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, largely fought on what is today Bulgarian territory, and the Liberation of Bulgaria to