SKOPJE, November 30 Board of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov arrived in North Macedonia through Greece, the correspondent reports.
Initially it was expected that the plane would fly through Bulgaria, which issued permission for the Russian plane to fly over. As the Russian delegation explained, this decision is due to the fact that the Bulgarian side gave permission for the Russian plane to fly over, which does not apply to the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova. Upon arrival, she published a post where she wrote: “Despite the enemy’s machinations, we are in Skopje.”
The Russian delegation noted that the Bulgarian authorities referred to sanctions imposed by the European Union, while such cases are not regulated by law in any way, since there was no talk of crossing the Bulgarian border.
In the capital of North Macedonia, the minister will take part in a meeting of the OSCE Foreign Ministers.
This trip was the minister’s first visit to Europe since the start of the special operation in Ukraine, not counting his visits to Belarus and Turkey. Lavrov’s last visit to Europe took place on January 21, 2022, he visited Geneva, where he had talks with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Trips to Geneva and Belgrade – in March and June 2022 – did not take place because European countries closed their airspace to Russian aviation.