Independent Macedonia

Early this morning, the "Ivan Mihailov" Cultural Center in the town of Bitola, in the Republic of North Macedonia, was set on fire.

Bulgarian President Rumen Radev made a sharp statement to the authorities in the Republic of North Macedonia. He said, "it was high time the anti-Bulgarian ideology swirling in our neighboring country to stop."

World War II nationalist leader Ivan Mihailov was once regarded as a Nazi collaborator, but has been rehabilitated in Bulgaria for use as a tool in the country's dispute over its shared history with North Macedonia, says Bulgarian historian Chavdar Marinov.

Accusations against Bulgaria of provocation and calls for the suspension of the Good Neighborly Relations Agreement were voiced by Macedonian politicians and members of the public after the visit of Vice President Iliana Yotova and Prime Minister Kiril Petkov to Bitola last week, BGNES reported.

Saturday's opening of a Bulgarian cultural club in the North Macedonia town of Bitola named after Ivan Mihailov, a controversial 20th Century nationalist movement leader who became a Nazi collaborator, has been criticised as a threat to ongoing attempts to achieve a breakthrough in the two countries' dispute over history.

North Macedonian President Stevo Pendarovski has personally joined the campaign against Bulgaria after the opening of the Ivan Mihailov Cultural Center in Bitola, BGNES reported.

"Citizens who declared themselves Bulgarians were regularly and directly insulted and belittled by enumerators, instructors and other members of the enumeration commissions."

This is what the Ivan Mihailov Cultural Center in Bitola is warning about on the occasion of the census in North Macedonia, which ended on September 30th.

Bulgaria's IMRO (Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization) nominates Milen Mihov as presidential candidate and Maria Tsvetkova as vice president, the party's press office said. Mihov is a nominee for presidential candidate of the National Youth Committee of IMRO and Bulgarians from Macedonia, which was adopted unanimously at today's meeting of the National leadership.

Although Skopje appointed former Prime Minister Vlado Buchkovski as special representative in Sofia, Macedonian politicians themselves do not trust him, and this is evident from the fact that he has an assistant, the state secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Senior presidential, government and municipal officials, as well as representatives of war veterans, laid flowers on Friday in front of the monument dubbed 'Mother's Broken Wing' in central Skopje in memory of the 54 young Macedonians who lost their lives amid the collapse of the federal Yugoslav state.