1 What progress has been made by the working groups of Dimitar Kovachevski and Kiril Petkov focused on turning Macedonia and Bulgaria to the future? How much humiliation from the official Bulgarian state policy must we endure for the Macedonian state leadership to say: Enough!
The bully doesn’t stop beating you, and you continue with meaningless negotiations.
After opening the Bulgarian club “Ivan Mihailov” in Bitola, in honour of the Bulgarian fascist collaborator who didn’t recognize Macedonians as people but as cattle, and after Bulgarian President Rumen Radev constantly repeating that the Macedonian identity is a fabrication of the Comintern, what else does Prime Minister Dimitar Kovachevski need to stop acting uninterested in the Bulgarian hostile activities towards our country? Will he still hope that Bulgaria will lift the veto in June just so we’d get a date for the start of the EU accession talks? They’ve been blocking us this whole time. That’s their policy.
Do they perhaps need to shoot teenagers and young men in Vatasha again so we’d be humiliated enough? Do we perhaps need to exhume the national heroes of World War II so they’d die once more fighting the Bulgarian fascists? Do we perhaps need to revive the souls of the Jews from Bitola, Shtip and Skopje so the “liberators” of Tsar Boris could deport them once more to Treblinka with the trains of the Bulgarian State Railways? Do we perhaps need to revive our ancestors who were left to rot in Bulgarian prisons to get some foot whipping?
We are a sovereign state, are we not? We are a NATO member. How far are we ready to go to destroy our dignity?
I’m exaggerating!? Absolutely not. Rumen Radev himself, as President of Bulgaria, commander-in-chief of the Bulgarian Army, in April 2022 said we Macedonians didn’t exist. How is that statement any different from the one of Putin, who in February 2022 said Ukrainians are a made-up nation, Ukraine is a made-up country and that’s why it shouldn’t exist?
The whole time, the European Union isn’t helping you. They say: Negotiate with Bulgaria. Because Bulgarians say that you don’t exist. Let us know you’re ready to start the EU accession talks, once you’ve agreed that you’re Bulgarians.
Since, it’s a topic of negotiations whether we exist.
2 What does it mean when they say we have to continue the negotiations with Bulgaria if we want to start the EU accession talks? If we really have to, then let’s just say we’re Bulgarians right away and skip all the dates.
What else needs to happen in terms of Bulgaria’s attitude towards us for us to see Dimitar Kovachevski and Hristijan Mickoski together? Imagine a meeting where they don’t talk about themselves and their parties. A meeting where Mickoski doesn’t blackmail them with early elections. Where they don’t try to outsmart each other by adding patriotic expressions in some declarations they’d vote on in the Assembly. Instead, let them start thinking what to do when it comes to the EU. Because our state doesn’t have a clear negotiation position. The only position we see at the moment is the one of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bujar Osmani, making sure Albania doesn’t go down with us.
If we’ve already agreed we want to be part of the EU, then let’s see if we’ll get stuck with Bulgaria trying to prove we exist, or we’ll have to change our strategy? How we’ll handle things at home while the EU supports Bulgaria? Who will we ask for help? Will we ask for help? Are we able to help the EU? Will we freeze the negotiations with Bulgaria? Will we temporarily freeze the negotiations with the EU?
The decision shouldn’t be “NO to the EU”. But NO to an EU that hypocritically supports the demands of its member state aiming to put an end to our existence.
The way Radev has started telling lies, the day is not far off when a European bureaucrat comes and sets a new condition for us – to reveal “the concentration camps in which we had beaten tens of thousands of Bulgarians” – as Radev said. The EU has a consensus in its decision-making. They have to agree on and acknowledge any nonsense the members put forward. Since nonsense comes from within, and we’re outside.
3 The next condition will be – how about you stop overdoing anti-fascism if you want to join the EU.
It was a European value when Willy Brandt, as Chancellor of then West Germany, knelt in Warsaw in 1970 to apologize for the crimes committed by fascist Germany against the Poles.
In 2022, it turned out that it’s a European value for us to kneel in apology to the Bulgarians, who 80 years ago had a fascist rule, while we were on the side of the anti-fascists.
The event in Bitola, when the entire Bulgarian state leadership came to the opening of the Bulgarian club named after a fascist, in the middle of a former Jewish quarter, was not an act of kneeling. We, on the other hand, are floored just to get a date to start the EU accession talks.
4 Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba left Bulgaria disappointed after Bulgarian politicians made excuses why they’re not sending military aid to Ukraine to defend against the Russian aggression.
“In democratic societies, it is normal for coalition governments to have different opinions, but it is very important to be on the right side of history and to deliver the right solutions. Pretending to be neutral means to be on the wrong side of history”, stated Kuleba after the meetings with Bulgarian politicians.
Traditionally, Bulgaria is on the wrong side of history. In World War I, in World War II, during the USSR when in 1968 it sent its army to help Brezhnev stifle the democratic reforms in Czechoslovakia. Even in the case of Putin’s invasion over Ukraine, why would Bulgaria break with this glorious tradition of being on the wrong side of history?
5 Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, commenting on a public-opinion poll which shows Macedonia sees Serbia as its closest friend, said: We love the Macedonian people. What do we ask of them? Nothing, just to maintain the best possible relations. Just to be friends and brothers”.
Please don’t, brother Vucic. Let us not be brothers. Do you know how many times Zoran Zaev and Boyko Borisov hugged each other and called each other “brothers”? “Friends” is enough. When someone calls you “brother” in the Balkans, they are up to no good.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
