North Macedonia’s foreign minister Timčo Mucunski is the first politician from his nation to visit Australia in 15 years.
"We are small, and you are far," he says. "So we have to remind you we are here.”
Having met with Foreign Minister Penny Wong and her Opposition counterpart David Coleman ,Mucunski’s key message was that North Macedonia is engaging on the world stage.
"It’s very important to engage with Australia, not just because of our huge Macedonian diaspora," Mucunski told SBS News in an exclusive interview.
"We are a member of NATO, Australia is a key partner of NATO. We share strategic partnerships with the United States, as does Australia.”
But while Australia might need a reminder, North Macedonia needs no introduction to the world’s largest superpower. During the 2016 United States presidential race between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump, more than 100 fake news websites that favoured Trump were launched from the small city of Veles, as opportunists capitalised on the advertising dollars linked to such sites.
Eight years on, North Macedonia's newly-elected conservative Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski and Mucunski were among a handful of world leaders invited to Trump’s second inauguration.
"We share common challenges and common goals with this new administration," Mucunski said.
Australia and North Macedonia held their first foreign ministers' meeting in 20 years this week Source: Twitter / @TimcoMucunski/X
Mucunski believes Trump and his administration are "committed to global peace", though acknowledges their methods to achieve it might be seen as "unconventional".
"But what has conventional diplomacy brought us?" he said. "It has brought us more war and more conflicts in the last few years on a global level."
He points to recent phone calls between Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, as an example.
"We've seen, especially in the last few days, very effective engagement by President Trump and his administration, and we've seen a very positive reception of that engagement by President Zelenskyy," Mucunski said.
While Zelenskyy has indicated a willingness to swap land with Russia as part of a peace deal, he has also objected to for talks to end the war.
"We, as a sovereign country, simply will not be able to accept any agreements without us," Zelenskyy said this week.
Trump later clarified Ukraine would not be sidelined in the talks.
North Macedonia's Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski and Foreign Minister Timčo Mucunski were among a handful of world leaders invited to Donald Trump’s second inauguration. Source: Getty / Chip Somodevilla
'We need to be much more pragmatic'
While insisting international norms and laws must be obeyed, Mucunski believes the West could be more flexible.
"We need to be much more pragmatic when we deal with issues of foreign policy," he said.
North Macedonia became known as such in 2019 following that settled a decades-long dispute with Greece and also cleared the way for it to join NATO a year later.
Today, it is the military alliance’s fifth largest aid donor to Ukraine on a per capita basis — no small undertaking for Europe’s third poorest country.
"It's important for strategic reasons … it’s important because what Russia did [invade Ukraine] is in defiance of the key principles of international public order and international law," Mucunski said.
"We are a small, landlocked nation, and upholding these standards is of the utmost importance to us."
‘Extremely serious’
North Macedonia was part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia before its collapse in 1991, which was followed by a decade of war.
Mucunski said Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which sparked the nearly three-year-long war, has destabilised an already fragile peace in the region — with reigniting in neighbouring Kosovo and Bosnia between Orthodox Serbs and Albanian and Bosnian Muslims.
He said there have been "serious attempts" at Russian malign influence in both the Western Balkans and south-eastern Europe.
Destroyed buildings in Kurakhove, Donetsk region, Ukraine, in November. Russia and Ukraine have been at war for nearly three years. Source: AAP, AP / Anton Shtuka
Mucunski believes EU membership would act as a bulwark against such interference.
"It’s necessary for delivery on the part of the European Union when it comes to the accession of the Western Balkan states as full EU members," he said. "And sometimes that clarity has been lacking."
North Macedonia has been on the EU’s candidate list for 20 years.
Tackling corruption 'biggest challenge'
North Macedonia currently ranks 76 out of 180 countries on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index — a two-place improvement from 2022.
"There is no bigger priority for our government than tackling corruption," Mucunski said.
"Both high-level corruption, but also… the corruption that is there in the judiciary, in public administration, and corruption that has even gone rampant in the business sector."
At the same time, under the current VMRO-DPMNE party government, it appears efforts to extradite the party’s former leader and convicted felon — Nikola Gruevski — have stalled.
The centre-right VMRO-DPMNE is closely aligned with Hungary’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orban, a fellow Trump advocate, who has been harbouring Gruevski since 2018.
Unlawfully influencing government officials to buy him a €600,000 ($992,000) bullet-proof Mercedes-Benz, money laundering and illegal phone-tapping are among his crimes.
"[His extradition] is not a decision, at the end of the day, that rests with our government but with the Hungarian government," Mucunski said.
"There are ongoing processes between the two countries."
Donald Trump a 'big thinker', Peter Dutton says
Remaining open-minded to the US president’s ideas — while calling for international law to be obeyed — is not a position reserved just for some European leaders.
Federal Opposition leader Peter Dutton praised Trump as a "big thinker" and "dealmaker" last week when asked about his response to the .
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was more muted in his assessment, reiterating Australia’s long-held calls for a two-state solution.
"Quite clearly the policy [Trump] announced…was a different one [to a two-state solution]," Albanese said.
Trump’s proposal has been rejected by regional powerbroker Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian Authority, the EU, United Kingdom, United Nations, France, Germany, and others.
Whether such a plan is a serious proposal, or a negotiating tactic is up for debate. International law expert Immogen Saunders from The Australian National University like ultimately yielded concessions on border security.
"Even if this announcement is actually a legitimate foreign policy that he really intends to pursue, that's not to say it would actually happen or that he might not change his mind in the next weeks or months," she told SBS News last week.
