In an interview due to be aired tomorrow, President Stevo Pendarovski made a new response to Bulgarian acting Foreign Minister Nikolay Milkov in the exchange the two have been engaged in for several days, as relations between the two countries are quickly spiraling.

Their exchange began with Milkov’s harsh comments after the beating of a Bulgarian activist in Ohrid. Milkov accused Macedonia of going back to the post-war days of killings and arrests of suspected Bulgarian collaborators. Pendarovski then invited Milkov to come to the village of Vatasha, where Bulgarian soldiers killed 12 young suspected socialist sympathizers in 1943. Milkov replied that this is incomparable with the systemic arrests of thousands of dissidents under the Yugoslav communist regime, and cited the island gulag of Goli Otok as a place where Bulgarians were arrested.

He does not know history, because you would be sent to Goli Otok not because you were Macedonian or Bulgarian, but based on whether you were for Tito or Stalin, Pendarovski replied today.

Over 16 thousand people were detained there, including about 1,000 Macedonians. The list includes political leaders Panko Brashnarov, Petre Piruze, Nikola Kljusev, as well as poet Venko Markovski.