The Mayor of Kumanovo Maksim Dimitrievski announced that he will not follow the Government order to remove plaques signifying the sites of World War Two fights and arrests, when they carry the words “Bulgarian fascist occupier”. Prime Minister Zoran Zaev called on municipal authorities to remove the plaques, as he previously ordered the removal of every public display of the Star of Kutles, to appease the Greeks.

We will not remove signs mentioning the Bulgarian fascist occupiers in Kumanovo. More than a thousand people from Kumanovo lost their lives in the Second World War, most of them by the Bulgarian fascist occupiers. I also can’t deny the fact that the subsequent Fatherland Front in Bulgaria was on the side of the allies. Still, Bulgaria needs to be self-conscious and to publicly apologize and then move on. Otherwise, if we are pressured to remove the plaques, we condemn our own people and those who lost their lives, Dimitrievski said.

Even though a member of the ruling SDSM party, the Mayor has been an outspoken critic of Zaev on this issue, and especially of Zaev’s envoy to Bulgaria Vlado Buckovski. In his BGNES interview, which caused a rift in the SDSM party, Zaev accepted all Bulgarian demands but did not follow up with a legally binding document. The 2017 Zaev – Borisov treaty contains a requirement on Macedonia to push back against public speech that is harmful to good neighborly relations, and Bulgaria has insisted that such plaques are part of harmful speech.