Bulgarian authorities condemned what they have called the deliberate burning of a Bulgarian cultural centre in North Macedonia on Saturday morning.
The Ivan Mihailov Cultural Centre was opened in Bitola, North Macedonia in April. While Mihailov is considered a national hero in Bulgaria, in North Macedonia and by many historians, he is considered a Nazi ally.
Mihailov did not recognise Macedonian identity, and during WWII, he lived for some time in Zagreb with Ante Pavelic, head of a fascist organisation and later leader of the Croatian Nazi puppet state. He then tried to form a similar state in Noth Macedonia but failed.
Macedonians fiercely opposed the naming of the cultural centre, the opening of which was attended informally by senior Bulgarian officials.
Following the torching of the centre on Saturday, the Bulgarian foreign ministry handed a protest note to the interim head of the Embassy of the Republic of North Macedonia in Sofia, Vladimir Krastevski.
The following day, Macedonian Foreign Minister Bujar Osmani said the incident did not affect the dynamics and atmosphere of the talks with Bulgaria, which continues to block Skopje’s EU accession bid.
Bulgaria’s Prime Minister Kiril Petkov called the fire “an attempt to provoke and destabilise our relations with our neighbours,” adding that his government will continue to work to protect the rights of the Bulgarian community in North Macedonia.
He expects Macedonian authorities to take punitive action. “The future of the region should not be held hostage to attempts to destabilise malicious marginal groups,” Petkov said.
For Bulgaria’s President Rumen Radev, “this is another provocation, part of the long-standing anti-Bulgarian campaign in North Macedonia,” that he said was tolerated by the authorities in North Macedonia.
The registration of citizens with Bulgarian identity in the country’s constitution as a nation-building people and providing secure and irreversible guarantees for overcoming hate speech are the most important conditions for lifting its veto on the negotiations process for EU membership, he said.
At the time of the incident, Bulgarian Foreign Minister Teodora Genchovska was visiting Skopje and visited the cultural centre in Bitola – which officially opened on 17 April with Petkov and Vice-President Iliana Yotova in attendance – after it was burnt.
“I saw on the recordings of one of the cameras a man who leisurely arrives by bicycle, takes off a tube of flammable liquid and calmly pours the liquid in front of the door of the house. (…) I suspect that the man has some injuries from this fire, maybe he will seek medical help. The man was wearing a mask,” Genchovska said.
“I do not believe that this will affect our relations with North Macedonia. I would not say that our relations are on fire. At the moment our relations are normal and constructive, there is a normal working dialogue,” she said.
