The SDSM – DUI presidential candidate Stevo Pendarovski admitted that Zoran Zaev accepted the proposed name deal with Greece in May 2018, meaning that he was pretending in public that he’s still negotiating with the Greeks for an entire month.
In an interview, Pendarovski said that the deal was accepted during the EU Summit in Sofia in mid May 2018.

I said it before, it was very undiplomatic what Macron told us last year during the Sofia EU – Western Balkans Summit. We already had a deal with Greece at the time and our Prime Minister said that it is a historic event and a hard fought compromise which we are yet to explain to our people, Pendarovski revealed. France blocked the opening of EU accession talks for Macedonia at the summit, despite the name deal.

After the summit Zaev and the Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov continued to publicly pretend that the deal is not yet done and that they are allegedly still negotiating with Greece. Two days after the summit, Zaev pushed the name “Republic of Ilinden Macedonia” as the only proposal he is prepared to accept for domestic use. Greece refused the name, and shortly later Zaev revealed that he also accepts the name “Republic of North Macedonia”. On May 31st, Zaev again claimed that he is still working on a deal, and said that “we are not looking for an agreement at any price”. This was two weeks after, as Pendarovski now reveals, the deal was already made.

All the way until June 11th, Zaev was still claiming that he is negotiating with Greece. On the 11th, he spoke with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and the next day he claimed that a deal was just struck.