Defence ministers of Bulgaria and North Macedonia: We are ready to strengthen defence cooperation

Hours after EU Enlargement Commissioner, Oliver Varhelyi, was in Bulgaria with a message that he will return in three weeks to seek Bulgaria's agreement to start negotiation process with the Republic of North Macedonia, the minister of defence of our south-western neighbour arrived in Bulgaria on May 20.

Slavjanka Petrovska and her Bulgarian counterpart, Dragomir Zakov, want to speed up the dialogue between the two countries in the area of defence.

As a reminder, Slavjanka Petrovska is known for the fact that during the elections for the mayor of Skopje (in 2021), she publicly announced the Bulgarian citizenship of the mayoral candidate from VMRO-DPMNE, Danela Arsovska, saying that a person with a "reserve fatherland" – referring to Bulgaria - cannot take care of the interests of the residents of Skopje. The press conference of Petrovska at that time, started a smear campaign against Arsovska, just on the basis that she has a Bulgarian passport.

At the joint press conference today where Slavjanka Petrovska considered that she needed an interpreter, she and her Bulgarian counterpart, Dragomir Zakov, announced that they had reached an agreement on three points:

• Republic of North Macedonia military medics to be trained at the Military Medical Academy in Sofia and at the Naval Academy in Varna;
• Bulgarian military to go on training at the joint centre "Krivolak" in the Republic of North Macedonia;
• a common understanding that stability in the Western Balkans is increasingly important against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine.

"This meeting is an exceptional sign that as NATO member states, Bulgaria and the Republic of North Macedonia have a crucial role to play in the region in maintaining stability and security. We have a very important task before us and future generations - never again to refer to the Balkans, and the Western Balkans in particular, as the “powder keg of Europe”. It is the responsibility of both countries to ensure that the Balkans will never be a source of tension and military conflict in Europe," Bulgaria’s minister of defence, Dragomir Zakov, said after the meeting with Petrovska.

We were unanimous that because of the war in Ukraine there are serious risks for the countries of the Western Balkans and as NATO member states we must do everything necessary to prevent the war from spreading beyond the borders of Ukraine, Zakov said.

Both countries are victims of cyber and hybrid attacks and we need to cooperate bilaterally to manage these risks, Zakov added.

He recalled that Bulgaria was one of the first countries to ratify the protocol on the accession of the Republic of North Macedonia to NATO. For us, North Macedonia's NATO membership is a guarantor of the country's territorial integrity and security, Zakov said.

He recalled that servicemen from both countries actively participate in joint exercises.

A number of other issues were also discussed at the meeting, such as how we can work on the Bulgarian military cemeteries.

Bulgaria is ready to strengthen bilateral defence cooperation because we share common values, destiny, history and future, the defence minister added.

For her part, Slavjanka Petrovska said they had agreed to further strengthen the existing joint work. The agreement on the education of military doctors at the Naval Academy in Varna and the Military Medical Academy in Sofia is in the final phase. Officers from the Army of the Republic of North Macedonia will be sent to the Military Academy in Sofia. The Bulgarian soldiers were part of the exercises in Macedonia in 2019-2020. An invitation has been extended for a joint exercise in the Republic of North Macedonia at the Krivolak centre.

Petrovska said that North Macedonia supports the NATO membership application of Finland and Sweden. In her words, nothing is the same after 24 February. The Russian aggression against Ukraine proved that there is no lasting peace. The new geopolitical architecture of the continent requires cohesion and joint work and collective security.

Petrovska's visit is a continuation of the high-level contacts started at the beginning of the year in an attempt to normalize relations between the two countries in the context of the European integration of the Republic of North Macedonia, vetoed first by France and then by Bulgaria since 2020.

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