Rubin Zemon, member of Parliament elected on the SDSM party ticket and adviser to Prime Minister Zoran Zaev, blamed an unnamed foreign intelligence service for the disastrous bus crash which killed 14 people and left seven in critical condition. Zemon alluded to Russian intelligence in the message he posted on his Facebook page, connecting the accident the fact that the same day Macedonian authorities began using the name “Republic of North Macedonia”, in an attempt to join NATO.

Some of my foreign friends are not discounting the possibility of sabotage of the bus, ordered from abroad! Some of the anti-NATO opinion makers started inflaming passions shortly after the news broke, and we can’t rule out this possibility! All of us must be careful because Macedonia has finally turned for the better, and some powers are not happy with that, Zemon wrote on Facebook.

Zemon would frequently write comments critical of Russia on his Facebook page, in which he would accuse the Macedonian opposition of ties with Russia.  The post was deleted shortly after several media outlets reported what Zemon has speculated.