SDSM claims in a statement that the possible possession of Serbian and Hungarian passports would mean that behind Gruevski his political allies and protectors still stand Viktor Orban i Aleksandar Vučić, and the government Hristijan Mickoski they accuse that by refusing to send a new request for extradition, it practically leaves room for his protection.
This new wave of accusations did not come out of nowhere. The future Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar said on April 12, 2026 that Hungary will not be a haven for foreign criminals, and then, answering questions from Polish television, he said that his government would extradite Romanowski and Ziobra to Warsaw, while also mentioning Nikola Gruewski.
Gruevski and the Serbian passport - a topic that keeps coming back
Political analyst and journalist Aleksandar Srbinovski tells "Vreme" that the claim that Gruevski has multiple passports is not new in Macedonian politics and mostly returns cyclically, when the opposition tries to impose a topic of high media potential, but without clear institutional confirmation.
"SDSM is currently in a phase of serious decline in political influence, with negative trends in public opinion surveys and a visible loss of space in the political spectrum. Therefore, such claims serve more for daily political positioning than for the actual opening of institutional processes," explains Srbinovski.
Aleksandar SrbinovskiAleksandar Srbinovski
Currently, there is no active international warrant or extradition process, which is why the whole topic is still primarily in the political and media domain, and not in the legal domain, according to Srbinovski.
He reminds that it is crucial to bear in mind the current status of Gruevski in Hungary. The former prime minister was granted political asylum, which is a legal status defined by Hungarian legislation. That status gives him certain rights and obligations, including the possibility to participate in local elections and the right to work, but not the same rights at the level of the European Union.
According to available information, adds Srbinovski, there is no immediate risk of deportation even if he were to move through individual EU member states. That is why the question of his eventual return to North Macedonia remains open, but primarily as a legal, not a political, issue.
Old alliances, new conflicts
In North Macedonia itself, the government is trying to show that there is no political protection in this regard. Current Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski said on April 14 that, if Gruevski appears in the country and if there is a final verdict, the security services will arrest him and take him to serve his sentence.
"We are a government for which all laws apply," said Mickoski at the time. That statement formally sounds like a clear departure from the former party leader, but the political background of the relationship between the two is much more complex.
As "Vreme" previously wrote, Mickoski and Gruevski were once party allies, but their relations have been strained for years.
Photo: Boris GrdanoskiChristian Mickoski
Srbinovski believes that the relationship between Mickoski and Gruevski today is not a relationship of political continuity, despite frequent assumptions that they are on the same political line. On the contrary, he says that this relationship in public is marked by distance and occasional indirect messages that point to deeper disagreements. As an indicator of this, he cites Mickoski's statement from a few years ago that "the truth is like an awl, it always comes to the surface", assessing that it was not just a rhetorical figure, but a signal of internal divergence and an attempt to draw a clear line between two political phases within VMRO-DPMNE.
However, Srbinovski adds that Mickoski is trying to redefine the party as a modern political organization, but without completely breaking with its previous structures.
How Gruevski escaped
The whole story, however, cannot be understood without recalling Gruevski's escape in 2018, which remains one of the most controversial chapters in contemporary Macedonian politics.
On November 9, 2018, Gruevski was supposed to report to serve a two-year prison sentence in the "Tank" case, which was related to the purchase of a Mercedes worth 600.000 euros. At that moment, his Macedonian passport had already been confiscated, but despite that he managed to leave the country, according to the information available at the time, with an identity card or some other travel document, he crossed to Albania, then to Montenegro, then to Serbia, from where he reached Hungary in order to avoid prison.
The President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, claimed in 2018 that Gruevski entered the territory of Serbia with regular documents, and that no warrant had been issued at that time. Vučić then said that Gruevski crossed the border with Serbia on November 11 with a regular identity card, accompanied by two people, and that he already left Serbia on November 12 at the Horgoš crossing with passport number 100.501, issued in Tirana, an identity card and accompanied by persons with diplomatic documents and a diplomatic vehicle. As he stated, only the next day, Serbia received a warrant from Interpol Skopje.
Photo: Government of North MacedoniaNikola Gruevski and Aleksandar Vučić
"VIP" refugee
The Hungarian stage of that road is no less controversial. Information appeared in Hungary about the direct participation of Hungarian diplomats in the car transfer of Gruevski to Budapest, which the Hungarian authorities rejected. Additional controversy was represented by the fact that it was the Schengen border, which Gruevski, according to available information, crossed without a passport.
State propaganda in Hungary at the time justified this with the thesis that it was a "VIP refugee", that is, a politician who, as a former prime minister, was allegedly treated as a special case.
Back in 2018, Gabor Bodis wrote for "Vreme" that Gruevski was granted asylum, contrary to international and Hungarian laws, and that it is not excluded that at some point he could be on a plane to Moscow or some other destination. In this context, the information that one of the cars in which the former Macedonian prime minister was driving had the plates of the Belarusian diplomatic mission in Serbia was particularly significant.
That is why the Macedonian public still has the perception that Gruevski's escape could not have been spontaneous. However, Srbinovski warns that perception is not the same as proof. "The media often mentions a route that includes Albania, Serbia and Hungary, but it is important to emphasize that no investigation to date has confirmed such a sequence of events, nor any possible coordination between the states," Srbinovski points out.
Lucrative business of Orban and Gruevski
Behind everything, however, is not only the story of one politician on the run, but also a much wider network of political and business connections between Gruevski and Orban. There is a whole series of affairs and controversies that have connected the two politicians for years - from the dubious functioning of Telekom Magyarska as a long-term monopolist in Macedonia, to the investment of controversial Hungarian companies in Macedonian media financed by dubious capital from Belize and the Virgin Islands.
Photo: AP Photo/Anna SzilagyiViktor Orban
Relations between Macedonia and Serbia
Srbinovski estimates that even if it were hypothetically confirmed that Gruevski has a Serbian passport, it would not open a serious interstate dispute between Belgrade and Skopje. "Such a situation would primarily be interpreted through the prism of political and individual responsibility, and not as a matter of bilateral relations," Srbinovski points out.
He reminds that the relations between Serbia and North Macedonia have a deeper political, social and historical basis than individual cases. Srbinovski concludes that SDSM's attempts to connect internal political processes in Macedonia with political developments in Serbia are analytically weak and artificial.
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