With his violent and fabricated campaign for the alleged Bulgarian citizenship of Skopje mayoral candidate Danela Arsovska, Zoran Zaev turned full circle in relations with Bulgaria. In 2013, at the now-burnt Global shopping center, Zaev pointed out the caption “This is Strumica, not Blagoevgrad,” in an attempt to portray his opponent in the local elections as a Bulgarian agent.

But after taking power, the first thing he signed as prime minister was the Zaev-Borisov agreement, which gave Bulgaria the right to demand a thorough review of the Macedonian history and a change in the national code of the Macedonians. This policy of Zaev sparked outrage, both among the opposition and in his own party. In order to please the Macedonian and Bulgarian public, Zaev started a campaign to minimize the differences between the two nations, and in his famous interview with BGNES less than a year ago, Zaev insisted that people from his native Strumica, which is not Blagoevgrad, speak the same language as Petrich residents on the other side of the border.

Exactly because of this interview, Zaev faced open protests by VMRO-DPMNE, but also by a number of high-ranking former SDSM officials – with Crvenkovski even resigning from his party while Zaev is at its helm. Zaev, however, remained persistent, and these days is stepping up the campaign to meet Bulgarian demands with open pressure on the Commission on Historical Issues with Bulgaria, while at the same time promising some compromise by the end of the year.

But, after the probably unexpected catastrophic defeat in the first round of the local elections, Zaev returned to the 2013 positions overnight. Aware that only with a victory in Skopje could he try to claim that the elections are not a complete defeat for SDSM, and faced with a candidate without any stain in her career, Zaev used the caption he once placed on Global, and deployed his propaganda machinery to accuse Arsovska of allegedly being a Bulgarian agent.

The accusations were denied by Arsovska as well as by the Bulgarian and Macedonian media, which after a short check determined that it was a simple forgery. But Zaev remained persistent and aggressively attacks the candidate, calling her a “kmet” and alluding to the Bulgarian occupation of Macedonia – the same occupation that until yesterday he sought to be erased from textbooks.

This is a very serious matter. She does not deny it. There is no clear denial. The truth will come out to the end. A mayor is elected in Skopje, a serf is elected in Bulgaria. There was a kmet of Skopje in 1941, but here we are electing a mayor. I claim that Danela Arsovska is also a citizen of Bulgaria. The problem is political, ethical, dishonest. You must tell your citizens, Zaev repeated in an interview with Saso Ordanovski.

As a city that his propagandists chose to be the alleged place where Arsovska reported Bulgarian residence is exactly Petrich – the city that Zaev pointed out as particularly close to Macedonia (and where the Zaev familly allegedly registered several companies for covert businesses in Macedonia). Pictures of Arsovska on billboards on which SDSM activists placed Bulgarian flags and the inscription “Petrich’s kmet” appeared on social networks today. What an end to the friendship policy that Zaev announced.

Bulgarian media react to Zaev’s aggressive campaign against their country. Without going into the authenticity of the allegations about Arsovska, the newspaper Trud asks “is it so bad to be a Bulgarian in Macedonia?” and conveys the style and brutality of the accusations that Zaev, Slavjanka Petrovska and other SDSM representatives use in accusing the opposition candidate of being an agent of Bulgaria.

Even uncritical supporters of Zaev, such as Katerina Kolozova, asked him where he was going with this campaign.

Zaev resorted to this tactic in other situations as well. In the midst of the Dragi Rashkovski scandal and the use of a shell company to procure Chinese vaccines, which was one of the most difficult times for his government, without seemingly any other provocation, then-Bulgarian Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Krasimir Karakachanov decided to help his ally Zaev and published a series of accusations that VMRO-DPMNE representatives allegedly had Bulgarian passports. After helping him defocus the public from the numerous corruption scandals for several days, Karakachanov admitted that they were people with similar names to VMRO-DPMNE MPs, and exposed his own manipulation, saying that he never claimed that they were the same people – “they probably recognized themselves,” the Bulgarian ultranationalist joked. Zaev is probably hoping for a similar result – he released fake information about the opponent, disrupted the political race, won in Skopje with the votes of DUI and after the elections announced a semi-apology.