'Macedonians Only Wish to Live Normally'

A protester fixes his tent set up in front of the Government building in Skopje, Macedonia, May 21, 2015. EPA/BGNES

Macedonians in Macedonia place much more importance on living well than on nationality, an emphasis Russia cannot understand, a Bulgarian journalist wrote Friday.

Starting with his personal recollections about Arben Xhaferi, who led Macedonia's Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA) prior to the incumbent Menduh Thaci, Georgi Daskalov seeks to fend off Russian allegations Bulgaria might seek to annex Macedonia or part of it, in an opinion piece [BG] for daily Standart.

Xhaferi joked about partitioning Macedonia in his private conversations with Daskalov, while "15 years later Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says [these things publicly]".

In the journalist's words, despite obvious "injustice" with regards to the development of Macedonia after World War Two, realities in Macedonia make claims of any partitioning sound absurd.

"Even if it seems implausible - Albanians are Macedonians too and want [to be] neither with Tirana nor with Pristina. While Macedonian Macedonians are neither Bulgarians nor Serbs, they are like nothing else in the world", he writes, adding the latter are torn between their nostalgia for the Tito era and others are aspiring to get a Bulgarian passport in search of directions in their life.

"This has nothing to do with nationality. It has to do with the normal human desire to live well. This is something Russians will find hard to understand."

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