Foreign Minister Bujar Osmani announced that he is greatly increasing the size of Macedonia’s mission in OSCE – to unprecedented 15 diplomats – in an attempt to salvage Macedonia’s chairmanship of OSCE in 2023.

What was supposed to be a major victory for the diplomacy was marred when a key diplomat serving in the mission in Vienna, Mile Milenkoski, was arrested because of his role in helping the brother of Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan flee the country to avoid corruption charges. In 2018, Milenkoski and two other Macedonian diplomats chartered a private plane and apparently procured a fake passport for Levon Sargsyan and helped him escape Yerevan.

Osmani today defended himself insisting he knew nothing about the scandal due to being relatively new at the job, and merely promoted Milenkoski to this position because he wanted to have experienced diplomats in a crucial psot.