President Stevo Pendarovski took part on Wednesday in the leadership meeting organized by the Belgrade Center for Security Policies, titled The Russian Aggression on Ukraine: A New Momentum in EU Enlargement?”, where he addressed the significance of NATO membership and the influence of Russian propaganda on Balkan.

“If we didn’t share the information within the NATO system as a member country, we couldn’t fight against all the propaganda and the fake news. Comparing the penetration of the Russian services in the region, especially in Macedonia, it is not as big as it was in 2018, when the referendum for NATO membership took place, when foreign agents set up 35 media accounts in one day, most of them with names similar to the existing media”, President Pendarovski assessed.

Regarding the bilateral dispute with Bulgaria as an obstacle to our integration into the EU, Pendarovski said that about two and a half years ago, Bulgarian began putting forward demands that have nothing in common with the EU criteria.

“They started talking about the Macedonian identity, claiming that the Macedonian language is but a dialect of Bulgarian, that during the Second World War, they were just administrators of this region, not occupiers and all that was disseminated in written form to all embassies. That kind of historical revisionism is absolutely unacceptable in any discussion”, Pendarovski said, adding that such dialogue doesn’t befit an EU member country.