Analysis by “Konrad Adenauer”: Macedonian Citizens Now Perceive Russia As an Enemy

In just one year, the negative attitude of the Macedonian citizens towards Russia, which moved from the group of friendly countries to the “biggest enemies”, just behind Bulgaria, increased significantly. This was shown by the public opinion poll and the analysis entitled: “30 years of independence (Analysis and research of public opinion)”, by the authors Aleksandar Spasenovski, Vasko Naumovski, and Jovan Andonovski, published by the Institute for Social Research “MK91” and the Foundation “Konrad Adenauer”

Author: Vesna Kolovska

To the question “In your opinion, which country is the biggest enemy of North Macedonia?”, 44 percent answered that it was Bulgaria, 29.3 percent answered that they did not know, followed by 12.1 percent of respondents, who believe that Russia is our greatest enemy. According to the respondents, these two countries (Russia and Bulgaria) have bad bilateral relations with our country, that is, 59.3 percent assess that Russia’s relations with our country are bad and 52.5 percent give that assessment to Bulgaria.

Professor Aleksandar Spasenovski, who is one of the authors of this Analysis, notes in his statement for “Truthmeter” that precisely the attitudes towards Russia have changed drastically in just one year.

In the public opinion survey of 2021, which referred to the three decades since the establishment of the independence of the Republic of Macedonia, the citizens’ opinion on the character of our country’s bilateral relations with Bulgaria and Russia was examined. At that time, 17.3 percent of respondents rated our country’s bilateral relations with Russia as bad, and 59.8 percent with Bulgaria. This means that, unlike 2021, in 2022 the negative odium of the citizens towards Bulgaria is almost unchanged, and towards Russia it has visibly worsened, Professor Spasenovski explains.

He believes that the mood of Macedonian citizens towards Russia can be correlated with the Russian aggression against Ukraine, which is also evident from the question in the penultimate part of this analysis.

Namely, 50.4 percent of the respondents consider that the Russian aggression against Ukraine is unjustified and unacceptable, while 26.2 percent consider that it is justified and acceptable, which points to the conclusion that the respondents have approximately the same attitude regarding this topic as the citizens of other member states the EU and NATO. Macedonian citizens thereby show that they live and share the fate of the other member countries of the Alliance, analyzes Spasenovski.

The public opinion survey conducted at the end of August 2022 on 1,111 respondents in a telephone survey, shows that Serbia is perceived as the biggest ally of North Macedonia, which is the answer of 37.4 percent of the survey participants, followed by the United States, Turkey, and Germany.

This article has been produced within the project Promoting Access to Reliable News to Counter Disinformation, implemented by the Metamorphosis Foundation. The article, originally published by Truthmeter,, is made possible by the support of the American non-profit foundation NED (National Endowment for Democracy). The content of this article is the responsibility of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Metamorphosis, NED or their partners.

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