Greek Foreign Ministry: Russia undermines Prespes peace deal

Late last night and while Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras faces a vote of confidence in his government following the departure of its junior coallition partner over the Macedonia name deal, the Greek Foreign Ministry issued, a strongly worded statement in which it cautions the Russian government not to interfere with the Prespes agreement.

The Greek Foreign Ministry said that Russia is sawing division in order to prevent the implimentaion of the Prespes agreement that would normalise relations between Greece and now North Macedonia.   

In a statement earlier Monday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said the deal was a Western plot to draw the Balkan country into the NATO security alliance.

“The decision by Macedonia’s Parliament, which voted in favor of changing the country’s name, has been imposed from outside and does not reflect the will of the people,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “It is clear that there is an ongoing process imposed from outside which is aimed at changing the country’s name in an artificial way with the ultimate goal of forcefully inducting Skopje into NATO.''

Greek Foreign Ministry statement

''The Prespa Agreement has been contributing, from the day of its signing, to the establishment of stability and peace in the Balkans. It constitutes an internationally recognised paradigm for the resolution of differences between two independent sovereign states under the aegis of the UN, free of third parties' intervention; differences that have long been undermining the prospect of the peoples in the region to peacefully co-exist and to work together for the benefit of the region’s stability and the security.

Our international partners are called upon to respect the spirit and letter of the Agreement and to embrace the fact that the political leaderships in both countries exhibited the necessary political courage in order to come to a solution on a particularly thorny issue, while defending their national interests.

Invoking domestic political developments in friendly countries by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is not in line with the level of relations between Greece and Russia and the long-standing ties of friendship between our peoples. At the same time, it fuels reasonable concerns, as it overlooks the coordinated and effective democratic functioning of institutions in Greece, whose Constitution contains clear provisions for every possibility in the interior political order, which certainly does not constitute a field favourable to comments on the part of third parties.

We express our certitude that Russia, which has for years recognized fYROM as the “Republic of Macedonia” will respect the sensibilities of the Greek people in using the name Macedonia and will henceforth refer to this country with its new constitutional name, i.e. “North Macedonia”, and most importantly that it will refrain from such statements, which constitute an intervention in Greece’s interior affairs.''