In a small church, in its center Skopje citytheir ethnic demons will come out today Balkanswho do not say to leave alone this long-suffering and unstable region. There, in the courtyard of the Orthodox Church of Sotiros, in a particularly tense atmosphere, residents of the city of Sotiros will gather. Bulgaria And her North Macedoniaofficials and ordinary citizens to pay tribute to Goce Delchev, a 19th-century warlord whose national identity Sofia and Skopje are now fighting to such an extent that their interstate relations have reached the razor’s edge.

So, from the grave of Delchev, on the occasion of the 151st anniversary of his birth, in the then Ottoman (now Greek) Kilkis, both sides will add another link to the “chain” of a dangerous confrontation between themselves, with geopolitical parameters around the national identity of the Slavic element of North Macedonia .

Both sides call Delchev the main hero of their country. They placed him in their national iconostasis as the main symbol of their national awakening, despite the fact that he was born and died in what is now Greek soil.

Importance today

Does it matter, especially in our time, whether a military leader with a mustache had a Bulgarian or North Macedonian consciousness, which is upsetting today? Big, say those who follow the undeclared war that has raged in recent years over the attempted ethnic emancipation of the Slavic-Macedonian element of North Macedonia.

The narrative of Bulgarian nationalism, “one nation, two states” is unacceptable for Skopje, which has struggled for decades to get rid of the “evil stepmother” by building its own national “Macedonian identity”, which, of course, Sofia disputes. .

Some reconciliatory efforts to jointly celebrate his memory, as well as a common approach to history, did not work out, and therefore today the two countries are “at odds”.

Citizens of North Macedonia and Bulgaria will come today to bow to the grave of the hero who separates them.

Bulgaria even uses as a weapon its veto power over North Macedonia’s European course to force it to recognize the de facto Bulgarian roots of the nation and language and demand constitutional recognition of the Bulgarian minority.

He also finances, according to Skopje claims, associations and associations of stamps to show his timeless presence and therefore the unity of the nation in the current territory of North Macedonia, while he distributed over 100,000 passports to citizens, which, according to Skopje, are accepted because they provide their owners with free movement within the EU.

The atmosphere is heated by the escalation of rhetoric from both, as well as random incidents at the events and movements of such associations, culminating in the beating of a member of the pro-Bulgarian union in Akhrid, which caused the recall of the Bulgarian ambassador. In Skopje, officials and the media are hinting at Russian underground activities behind Bulgaria aimed at destabilizing the region.

Europeans and Americans are moving in the background to defuse tensions that threaten to add another wound to NATO’s southeastern flank – after Turkey and Greece.

At another time, all this could be perceived as another nationalist Balkan fight. But now the need to achieve a unity of the security architecture in the Balkans is imperative for the Atlantic Alliance, whose members are both states and adjoin the explosive zone of Ukraine.

In such an electrifying atmosphere, the citizens of North Macedonia and Bulgaria will come today to bow to the grave of their separating hero(s). Nerves are on edge and the authorities have taken draconian security measures to prevent any incidents. A powerful police force has been guarding Deltsev’s grave day and night since the middle of the week, and at the border, as it became known, the authorities of North Macedonia will strictly control the Bulgarian pilgrims.

However, President Stevo Pandaroski asked his government to ban the entry of two Bulgarian MEPs, sparking anger in Sofia, where the conflict with Skopje is high on the parties’ electoral agenda due to upcoming parliamentary elections. Somewhere here, two “belligerents” are going to drag Greece into conflict with each other, with VMRO DPMNE vice-president Nikoloski in Skopje being asked to open a museum in Kilkis, where Deltsev was born, and in Sofia, Bulgarian nationalists are preparing a pilgrimage in April to Carrie de Serres, where he was killed…