At least six bilateral agreements, another rumoured one between two other countries, one environmental and one political protest, statements of political approbation and disapprobation, 2800-strong police task force and two security zones as part of the stringent security measures, one announced visit of a Soviet dissident and rejected presidential candidate, hundreds of media headlines...

This, in short, built up the clamour in the run-up to the January 17-18 visit by Russian president Vladimir Putin to Bulgaria.

The visit is Putin’s second to the country and takes place two months before it is confirmed to the world who will succeed him as president.

Putin’s agenda in Bulgaria, however, looks anything but that of an outgoing president. As Russia’s constitution requires Putin is leaving office after two terms of office as president. Yet his busy agenda shows no lessened vigour to push forward Russia’s long-standing strategy for global energy dominance, with or without Putin officially at the helm.

The major energy agreement of the visit is expected to be a final contract on the construction of Bulgaria’s second nuclear power plant at Belene. The contract is said to specify that the equipment will be Russian-made, although the reactors’ heads will be made by Germany’s Siemens and France’s Areva.

Another landmark document to be signed is the agreement to incorporate the International Project Company (IPC), the entity that is to build and operate the Bourgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline.

Bulgarian and Russian transport ministry officials were also due to sign a document to create a ferry line to connect the Russian port Kavkaz and Bulgaria’s Varna. The line is expected to facilitate bilateral traffic in goods and commodities. Defence, tourism and culture will also be re-affirmed, via new bilateral agreements, as areas of joint interest.

Serbia’s eyes and ears are honed on Putin’s visit, given the political row that broke out on the news that Russian gas monopoly Gazprom wanted – with no tender, exclusivity clauses and at half the market price – to buy a majority stake in NIS, Serbia’s oil and gas giant. The offer by Gazprom, according to news reports by Serbia’s Vecernije Novosti and Dnevnik dailies, was also said to be bound with a bilateral agreement on oil and gas deliveries and sealed with the signatures of top officials in Sofia.

Objections by Serbian politicians, who said NIS was too high an economic cost for Russia’s support on the Kosovo status problem, have an equivalent here in Bulgaria.

Right-wing minority opposition party the Democrats for Strong Bulgaria (DSB) and civic and non-governmental organisations, including the Civic Initiative Justice, the Association for Freedom of Speech Anna Politkovskaya, have planned protests on both days of Russia’s visit. The protest will generally denounce Bulgaria’s reported “subservience” to Russia, which attempts to turn Bulgaria into the “Trojan horse of Putin’s oligarchy into the EU”.

Ognyan Minchev, director of the Institute for Regional and International Research, summed up the essence of the protest: “Russia will bring to Bulgaria all that costs no money. In return, Bulgaria will have to give Russia for free all that costs much money – Bourgas-Alexandroupolis, South Stream, the huge price for the construction of Belene NPP that nobody needs.”

Seven rightist parties and the country’s two largest trade unions, KNSB and KT Podkrepa, issued a declaration against the construction of the Bourgas-Alexandroupolis pipeline.

The visit by Putin to Bulgaria promised to be as controversial as any of his elsewhere, if only for the fact that Russia evokes disparate associations in Bulgaria, given varying interpretations of Bulgarian-Russian history and varying understandings of Russia’s current foreign policy.