Lajm TV published footage of a meeting between the former security services chief Saso Mijalkov and Artan Grubi, the DUI party mover who is expected to be named First Deputy Prime Minister – with rumored veto rights over all decisions made by Prime Minister Zoran Zaev.

The meeting took place in the Marriott hotel, which serves as Mijalkov’s base. Mijalkov was a powerful figure in VMRO-DPMNE, but since the SDSM party power-grab in 2017, he has steadily moved closer to the leftist party and is now openly supporting their moves. He helped SDSM get to 81 votes in Parliament for the imposed renaming of Macedonia, and just today a group of his supporters, former VMRO-DPMNE members, staged a press conference in front of the VMRO office demanding a resignation from party leader Hristijan Mickoski. The move against Mickoski seems designed to distract from the creation of the SDSM – DUI coalition which is unpopular in both parties, and caused an outright rift in DUI.