North Macedonia

Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov and the European Commissioner for Neighborhood and Enlargement Oliver Varhelyi gave a press conference after their meeting in the Council of Ministers, at which the EU membership of North Macedonia was discussed.

"The citizens of the Republic of North Macedonia cannot be held hostage pending dates at any subsequent European Union summit. The withdrawal of Slavi Trifonov's party from the government in Bulgaria is an internal matter. We exchanged ideas with Bulgaria on how to lift the veto.

The court in Bitola has ordered 8 days of arrest for the Macedonian singer Lambe Alabakovski, who was detained yesterday for setting fire to the front door of the Bulgarian Cultural Center "Ivan Mihailov" in Bitola. The attack took place in the early hours of June 4.

At the beginning, Macedonian Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski addressed the audience, greeting all participants gathered, as citizens of the Western Balkans.

The perpetrator, who set fire to the front door of the "Ivan Mihailov" Cultural Center in Bitola, North Macedonia, was caught. This was announced by the Macedonian Minister of Interior Oliver Spasovski on his Facebook account.

The 34-year-old singer Lambe Alabakovski has been arrested. He works and lives in America, but returned to Bitola a few weeks ago.

French President Emmanuel Macron has expressed readiness to bring together in Paris, "when the time comes", representatives of the authorities in Sofia and Skopje to conclude a bilateral agreement that would allow negotiations to begin on the accession of the Republic of North Macedonia (RNM) to the European Union, AFP reported, quoted by BTA.

The United States Department of State has described as "independent" the decision of Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Montenegro not to allow Sergey Lavrov's plane through their airspace.

That agreement would enable the opening of negotiations for Skopje's accession to the European Union.
However, as he said, that will happen "when the time comes".

The State Department said on the occasion of the decision of Montenegro, Bulgaria and North Macedonia not to allow the overflight of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's plane on the way to Belgrade, that they, as sovereign states, "made sovereign decisions on airspace, reflecting Europe's determination to hold Russia "accountable" for the attack on Ukraine.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's visit to Serbia has been cancelled after countries around Serbia closed their airspace to his aircraft, a senior foreign ministry source told the Interfax news agency on Sunday.
"Those reports are accurate," a high-ranking source in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Interfax today.