The small Balkan country of Macedonia is turning into an unexpected stage for tension between Moscow and the West.

A year and a half after antigovernment protests broke out in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, similar scenes are playing out on the streets of Skopje, Macedonia: Tens of thousands of protesters have swarmed the city’s center in recent weeks, angered over excerpts from illegal wiretaps that activists say expose corruption and a gross abuse of power in Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski’s government.

During the works of the Vienna Economic Forum in Tirana, the Prime Minister of Kosovo, Isa Mustafa met with his counterpart from the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia , Nikola Gruevski.

Their meeting took place at Tirana’s “Congress Palace.”  They discussed the recent events in Kumanovo. “We discussed the issue of Kumanovo, and we have requested an international investigation on Kumanovo conflict,” Mustafa reportedly told Albanian media after the meeting.

In an opinion piece published on the online edition of Koha, columnist Enver Robelli writes that Kosovo buried with high honours a group of “evildoers” killed in a “senseless” clash with the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) authorities. “These self-styled liberators left hundreds of residents in Kumanovo homeless and endangered hundreds of others for Skopje’s secret services. No ‘national cause’ was defended in Kumanovo because the decision about what means to employ to fight for their rights is taken by Macedonian Albanians and not racketeers from Kosovo,” writes Robelli.

Zoran Zaev, leader of the LSDM opposition party in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, said for the German daily Die Zeit, that seven Albanians sentenced for the murder of five Macedonian citizens in Smilkovac, Skopje, are innocent. He said that making public the taping material on this case could induce turmoil of the Albanian ethnic community in FYROM. “There can be victims. Therefore we are currently having intensive discussions with Albanians in order to find ways of preventing such reaction.

Thousands of people turned out in Kosovo's capital on Tuesday to pay their respects to eight ethnic Albanian militants killed earlier this month in neighboring Macedonia, whose government labeled them as terrorists.

Eight Macedonian policemen and 10 Albanian militants, nine of them from Kosovo, were killed in a day-long battle in the northern Macedonian town of Kumanovo on May 9. It was the country's most serious violence since Western diplomacy pulled it back from the brink of civil war in 2001.

This portal carries an opinion piece by activist from Kumanovo (FYROM) Ivana Jordanovska, published initially in Macedonia in English, worldpress.com. Below find the complete opinion piece.

The leader of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPO), Heinz-Christian Strache, has urged the international community to strongly condemn the events in FYROM and said that, given the growing Albanian extremism, the Kosovo issue should not be linked to the continuation of Serbia's path towards the EU.

How do you assess the current situation in FYROM, and armed conflict in Kumanovo? 

Prosecutor from the Kosovo Special Prosecution, Ali Rexha, said that an autopsy will be performed on the bodies of nine Kosovo men killed in Kumanovo on 9 and 10 May once they are handed over to Kosovo authorities. Rexha however explained that he is waiting for an autopsy request from the families of the killed persons before issuing such an order.

Members of the European Parliament on Wednesday urged international investigation into the armed incident that happened in Kumanovo, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) two weeks ago. During the yesterday’s plenary session, MEPs called on the European Parliament to support FYROM on its road towards the EU, but urged respect for the rights of all its citizens. Austrian MEP Ulrike Lunacek said that she was shocked by the incident in Kumanovo."There should be an independent investigation on what happened there.

The Prime Minister of the Republic of Kosovo, Isa Mustafa, said today in Pristina that Kosovo is not a destabilizing factor and that it had nothing to do with the latest incidents in Kumanovo, in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. He also said that stability in FYROM means stability in the region, including Kosovo. Mustafa made these remarks during the regular meeting of the Kosovo government.