Kumanovo Mayor Maksim Dimitrievski continued to voice opposition to his own SDSM party over its plan to accept Bulgarian positions on issues of national identity and history. Dimitrievski was critical of his party leader Zaev after Zaev’s scandalous BGNES interview, and now denounced former party leader and Prime Minister Vlado Buckovski, who was named envoy to Bulgaria.

In between lines, Buckovski claims that the Macedonians and the Bulgarians are one nation divided in two countries and calls on the historians to abandon the positions promoted during the former state of Yugoslavia (the NOB partisan struggle and the AVNOJ and ASNOM anti-fascist assemblies). That is high treason. The attempts to accept Bulgaria’s position that the Macedonian people exists only since 1944 just affirms the claims that we are an artificial creation. It runs counter to the Macedonian national interests. We hear these claims coming from Buckovski, a former Prime Minister who was expelled from SDSM, a man who replaced ideology with clientelism and intrigues. As a long time active social-democrat member I publicly denounce these positions which can’t be supporter by our party members or the public, Dimitrievski said.

Dimitrievski responded especially angrily at Zaev’s claim, in the BGNES interview, that Bulgaria liberated Kumanovo and other cities, including Skopje, during the Second World War.