Bulgarian expert: “Russia’s actions are justified, Ukrainians are Russian Macedonians”

Bulgarian journalist and international law expert Velizar Enchev is convinced that Vladimir Putin will not invade Ukraine, because Ukrainians are part of the Russian people.

The expert stated this on BTV, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.

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According to Enchev, for the last twenty years Russia has been surrounded by NATO countries from the “eastern front” and the proximity of the alliance’s military bases poses a huge danger for it: a hypersonic missile fired from there can reach St. Petersburg in five to seven minutes, and the supply of weapons from them to Ukraine is not possible will take a lot of time.

“You understand that Putin’s demands to stop the expansion of NATO, not to place offensive weapons on the territory of Ukraine and in the countries of the Alliance, especially in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania and Bulgaria, are completely logical,” the expert noted. “However, it is unlikely that the Russian president will make a fatal mistake in terms of invading Ukraine. After all, the Ukrainian people are part of the Russian people.”

At the same time, he compared Russian-Ukrainian relations with the situation between Bulgaria and North Macedonia.

“Ukrainians are, one might say, Russian Macedonians,” concluded Velizar Yenchev.

Today's Macedonians are the western part of the Bulgarian ethnic group, which historically found itself outside the Bulgarian state. After the First Balkan War, the Bulgarian-populated territory of Vardar Macedonia, liberated from the Ottoman Empire, was assigned to Serbia (Aegean Macedonia was populated primarily by Greeks and went to Greece, Pirin Macedonia to Bulgaria), subsequently to Yugoslavia, and began to be spiritually nourished by the Serbian Orthodox Church.

The Serbian monarchy, until its actual fall at the beginning of World War II, did not abandon attempts to softly assimilate the Macedonian Bulgarians, putting forward the concept of “Bulgarized Serbs,” which, in turn, caused sharp rejection by the local population and even provoked a guerrilla war against the Yugoslav authorities.

The years of World War II can be considered the beginning of the Bulgarian-Macedonian confrontation, when the passionate part of the population of Vardar Macedonia, who had previously sympathized with Bulgaria, came under the banner of anti-fascist resistance, while official Sofia became an ally of the Third Reich.

The communists who came to power in Yugoslavia in 1945, in defiance of Bulgaria, which remained allies of the USSR after the conflict between Stalin and Tito, spurred the process of formation of a special Macedonian identity. The Socialist Republic of Macedonia was created, as well as a separate Macedonian nation. And along with them the Macedonian language, Macedonian history, and even the “Macedonian Orthodox Church”, established with the support of atheistic authorities.

After the collapse of Yugoslavia, Greece made claims against newly independent Macedonia, claiming that the Slavs appeared on the territory of historical Macedonia much later than the Hellenic ancient Macedonians, and therefore do not have the right to such a name as a nation and country. Athens blocked the state's entry into the UN until Skopje adopted the name "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" and the flag with the symbol of the ancient Macedonian kings, the Virgin Star, was replaced by a flag with the image of the sun.

_{After the 2018 Prespa Agreement with Greece, Macedonia changed its name to “North Macedonia”, as a result of which the path to NATO was opened for it; the country became a member of the alliance in 2020.}

Now Bulgaria is blocking the process of North Macedonia's accession to the EU, demanding that the concept of the Macedonian language be abandoned, considering it a dialect of the Bulgarian language, that such iconic heroes as one of the leaders of the anti-Turkish uprising Gotse Delchev be recognized as exclusively Bulgarian heroes, and many other concessions that will inevitably lead to the collapse of the national identity of the Macedonian Slavs.