VMRO-DPMNE President Hristijan Mickoski confirmed that he will attend the opening of a Macedonian cultural center in Blagoevgrad, in the region of Pirin Macedonia in Bulgaria on Sunday, and reiterated that Macedonians in Bulgaria are working to improve ties between the two countries. The club will be named after Nikola Jonkov Vapcarov, a distinguished socialist poet who was killed by the Axis aligned Bulgarian regime in 1942.

Bulgaria can’t take the opening of the club as a provocation because we are not opening a club that will be named after a proven Fascist collaborator, Mickoski said, hinting at the two recent clubs that Bulgaria opened in Macedonia, named after Nazi collaborator Vanco Mihajlov and Tsar Boris III, who led Bulgaria during the period of the war where it was allied with Germany.

“We also do not deny the Bulgarian identity, while they deny our identity. Maybe you could compare these instances of opening of cultural clubs if we denied the Bulgarians and insisted that they are Macedonians. But we don’t We are simply going there to support our people, to shake their hands and to tell them that they are not alone, that we are with them. We are not interfering in the internal affairs of our eastern neighbor. We are respectful of what is ours and also of what is theirs”, Mickoski added.