site.btaUPDATED Head of State Says It Is High Time Skopje Abandoned anti-Bulgarian Rhetoric

President Rumen Radev responded Thursday to negative reactions in North Macedonia to the opening of a culture club named after Ivan Mihailov, in the presence of top-level Bulgarian state officials. "It is high time the anti-Bulgarian ideology which is rampant in the Republic of North Macedonia and which is intentionally used to poison our relations and undermine Skopje's road to the EU, remained in the past," said the President as he took reporters' questions.

The naming of the culture club in Bitola after a IMRO leader Ivan "Vanche" Mihailov, who is seen as a freedom fighter and a hero in Bulgaria and as a fascist and terrorist in North Macedonia, inflamed the local community and representatives of various parties and the government in North Macedonia saw it as a provocation.

Radev said: "The attempts of politicians in North Macedonia to build identity on the basis of the falsehoods of the Communist International rather than of historical facts, are against the interests of the people of North Macedonia, who sincerely wish to become part of the EU. If we have to talk about Fascism, it must be clear that Ivan Mihailov is the person who rejected Hitler's attempts to get Macedonia involved in a fratricidal war with Bulgaria. It was other people, not Ivan Mihailov, who, after the establishment of Yugoslav dictatorship in Macedonia, killed and tortured tens of thousands in concentration camps only because they continued to call themselves Bulgarians and not Macedonians. That was real Fascism." 

The Bulgarian Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Thursday, saying that the Bulgarian State will continue to make all necessary efforts, in accordance with international law, to support and protect the Bulgarians in North Macedonia. The statement came in response to the reactions in the Republic of North Macedonia in response to the opening of the Bulgarian culture club in Bitola on April 16. 

The Foreign Ministry expressed astonishment by the sharp position of the authorities in the Republic of North Macedonia and the anti-Bulgarian media campaign there in recent days in response to the culture club's opening.